The Beyblade in his hand looked nothing like anything that should exist in the Burst world.
Crimson and black — molten shades swirling together like magma frozen mid-eruption.
The metal shimmered faintly under the sunlight, lines of heat rippling through the air as if the world itself was struggling to focus on it.
It wasn't glossy like a store-bought Bey.
It wasn't flashy with decals or sponsor marks.
It looked ancient.
Dangerous.
Like something forged, not manufactured.
Tiny fractures ran across its surface, glowing faintly — veins of light that pulsed like lava trapped in obsidian.
The longer he looked, the more it seemed alive, heat coiling beneath the surface like a sleeping beast that hadn't decided whether to wake up yet.
It looked less like a toy and more like a meteor that had crashed to Earth and decided to cosplay as one.
Zevion turned it slowly in his palm, watching faint waves of distortion ripple off it.
His reflection bent and twisted in the metal.
"…Yup. Definitely not mass-produced," he muttered dryly.
From the jumbled info dump that had nearly melted his brain earlier, he remembered one detail:
This Beyblade could evolve on its own — self-repairing, self-growing, feeding on battles — but it could also evolve manually by merging with other Beyblades.
"Basically… Pokémon fusion but for spinning tops," he murmured, lips twitching into a grin.
"Alright, cheat item. Let's get you an upgrade."
A few minutes later, he stood in front of the local Bey shop — the kind of place that looked like a festival had exploded inside a toy store.
Banners screamed things like "Unleash Your Spirit!" and "Let It Rip With Passion!"
The air smelled faintly of plastic, sweat, and sugar from the candy stall across the street.
Kids filled every corner — shouting, battling, celebrating, crying — the entire emotional spectrum of childhood condensed into a plastic arena.
The whirl of launchers and the metallic clash of Beys echoed through the air in chaotic symphony.
Zevion slipped past it all with the practiced ease of someone who had mastered the art of invisibility.
He approached the counter, nodding politely at the clerk — an overenthusiastic teen with a badge that said "Let it rip responsibly!"
"Need a new Bey?"
The clerk asked brightly.
"Something like that."
Zevion's gaze wandered to the display case, picking out a red all-rounder-type model.
"That one. And…"
He tapped the counter.
"A new endurance launcher."
The clerk hesitated.
"You, uh, new to Beyblading?"
"Gift for my cousin," Zevion replied smoothly.
The teen nodded — unconvinced but happy to make the sale.
Money spoke louder than curiosity.
A few minutes later, Zevion walked out with a bag full of shiny new parts and the faint, creeping suspicion that he had just armed himself for future property damage.
The mountain near the edge of town was perfect.
Quiet.
Empty.
No people, no nosy kids, just open space and the kind of silence that carried only wind and birdsong.
He found a clearing halfway up, where the ground was cracked and uneven — the sort of place nature had stopped maintaining out of sheer disinterest.
Zevion crouched, setting down two Beyblades on a patch of dry earth.
Apeiron Sof pulsed faintly in his hand — an ominous, rhythmic glow like a second heartbeat.
The new Bey, factory-perfect and unremarkable, sat beside it like a lamb before a wolf.
"Alright," Zevion said quietly, "let's see what 'manual evolution' actually means."
He moved them closer.
The moment the two Beys touched, the air snapped — a sharp, static crack that raised the hair on his arms.
Apeiron Sof's molten shell rippled.
The ordinary Bey shuddered.
Then, like something out of a nightmare, the black-red surface of Apeiron Sof stretched outward — a molten shadow swallowing the new Bey whole.
Zevion flinched back.
A wave of heat rolled off the fusion.
The crimson glow brightened until the outlines blurred, red veins twisting, black light collapsing inward like a dying star devouring its own core.
Then, silence.
The glow faded.
In its place spun a new Beyblade — still red and black, but sleeker now, sharper, the molten lines cooled into veins of glowing amber that pulsed softly with life.
It looked… tamed.
It finally looked like a Burst-series Bey — or at least, something that could pretend to be one.
Zevion tilted his head.
"Okay… still mildly illegal-looking, but we'll call that progress."
He picked up his old launcher — cracked, worn, a relic from his childhood that had somehow survived a decade of storage and neglect.
"Alright, partner," he muttered, lining up the shot.
"Let's not die today."
He aimed at a boulder the size of a small car, drew in a breath, and yanked the ripcord.
The Bey tore through the air like a bullet.
A shockwave burst outward — dust, wind, and the faint smell of ozone.
The launcher disintegrated in his hand.
A heartbeat later, the boulder shattered into gravel.
The sound hit a moment later — a deep, chest-thudding crack that rolled across the mountainside.
Dust whipped past his face, dry and sharp, like sandpaper on the wind.
Silence followed, broken only by a few pebbles rolling down the slope.
Zevion stared, expression blank.
"…That was the sealed version?"
A faint pulse answered from Apeiron Sof, smug and satisfied — like it had just winked.
He sighed.
"Great. My Beyblade has an ego."
He brushed the dust off his jacket, glancing at the remains of his childhood launcher — melted plastic and smoking gears.
Good thing he'd bought a spare.
He unpacked the new endurance launcher — sleek, reinforced, built to handle high torque.
In theory.
"Alright, let's try this again. Target: that tree."
He aimed at a thick oak about twenty meters away and pulled.
The Bey roared across the field.
A streak of red-black light tore through the air.
For a second, it was beautiful — pure speed, raw energy, perfection in motion.
Then the launcher exploded.
Every tree in a twenty-meter radius followed suit — splintered, cracked, or uprooted.
The forest shuddered, birds didn't even bother flying away — they just evacuated the continent, and somewhere in town, a dog started barking for no reason at all.
Zevion stood in the middle of it, holding half a melted launcher and the smoldering remains of his dignity.
"…Okay. That's… a bit much."
Smoke curled lazily through the clearing.
The scent of burnt wood mixed with the metallic tang of ozone.
The ground was scarred in circular patterns — perfect spirals etched into the dirt.
It looked less like a test site and more like the aftermath of a military experiment gone wrong.
Wait, why should it even look like a test site?
It's not weapons being tested…
Anyway!
For a long moment, he just stood there, hands on his hips, watching the destruction.
The wind tugged at his hair.
The Bey hummed faintly in his palm — smug, satisfied, utterly guiltless.
"If I keep this up," Zevion muttered, "I'll either be banned, arrested, or exorcised."
In the world of Beyblade, breaking someone's Bey was borderline sacrilege.
Breaking the arena itself?
Heresy.
And here he was, casually terraforming the mountainside.
So he did what any responsible reincarnator with too much power would do — he trained quietly.
A Few Melted Launchers Later
Every few days, the shop clerk would see him again, walking in with the same deadpan expression and another melted launcher.
"Another one broke?"
The clerk would ask, already reaching for a replacement.
"Yeah," Zevion said, placing the twisted remains on the counter.
"This one lasted two seconds longer. Progress."
At some point, the clerk stopped asking questions altogether.
By the end of the week, the mountain had lost several trees, gained a few new craters, and Zevion had learned one universal truth:
Power didn't feel like victory.
It felt like a responsibility you didn't sign up for.
Having a final-boss Beyblade was cool — until you realized the real boss wasn't the Bey.
It was you trying to control it.
Let me clarify something — why he was the boss.
Managing Apeiron Sof wasn't like owning a Beyblade — it was like running a company with infinite potential and even more ways to go bankrupt.
Every launch meant money.
New launcher.
New gloves — the last pair had literally fused from heat.
His savings account, once steady and smug, was now bleeding faster than his sanity.
Evenings became paperwork.
Zevion would sit at his desk surrounded by empty noodle cups, broken launcher shells, and the faint smell of burnt plastic that had permanently infested his room.
The ceiling fan's dull hum barely masked the clatter of his calculator — like both were competing to see which could sound more tired.
"Okay…" he muttered, tapping the buttons like he was inputting a death sentence.
"Three launchers per day… average cost fifteen hundred yen each… multiplied by—"
He paused.
"—the number of mental breakdowns per week…"
He pressed "equals."
The calculator beeped.
The number blinked at him like it was mocking his existence.
He stared at it, eyes dull.
"…Yeah," he exhaled, "I'm gonna need a sponsorship… or divine intervention."
He slumped back in his chair.
The old springs groaned in sympathy.
For a moment, he just sat there — the soft hum of his laptop, the tick of the wall clock, and the distant chirp of crickets outside becoming a kind of funeral rhythm for his wallet.
His "training sessions" had long stopped being training.
They'd turned into a business model gone wrong — half research, half accident report.
Risk assessment.
Cost management.
Collateral damage reviews.
While other Bladers practiced to get stronger, Zevion practiced not to accidentally trigger another small-scale natural disaster.
Progress, by his standards, meant "less visible destruction."
And by that definition, he was doing great.
Last week, a single launch had cleared half a hillside.
Today, he'd only vaporized one tree.
Progress.
That was efficiency.
That was growth.
Still, no matter how much he adjusted, the launchers kept breaking.
He'd gone through cheap ones, mid-tier ones, top-end endurance models, even a custom-built version from an overconfident mechanic who said it could "handle anything short of divine wrath."
It lasted three seconds.
He could still remember the smell of melted wiring and the mechanic's horrified expression when Zevion brought the ashes back in a paper bag.
So, he did the logical thing — or what passed for logic in his head.
He decided to quit.
Enough training.
Enough repairs.
Enough pretending he wasn't a one-man environmental hazard.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the faint ceiling light flickering above him.
His reflection in the window looked tired — eyes half-lidded, a hint of soot still smudged on his cheek.
"Guess I'll go back to my sloth arc," he muttered.
But before officially retiring from self-funded destruction, he wanted to try something once.
A final test.
Apeiron Sof's sealed form — its weakest possible state, without him throttling it down any further.
"If I'm gonna stop," he murmured, standing later that evening in his usual mountain clearing, "I might as well see what your 'safe mode' looks like."
The clearing was quiet.
Wind whispered through the trees, carrying the smell of damp earth and pine.
Distant insects hummed in the dusk, and a faint orange glow painted the horizon as the sun began to dip.
It was peaceful — the kind of peace you never realized you'd miss until it was gone.
He crouched and lifted the Bey from the ground.
Its molten lines pulsed faintly, softening until the glow faded to embers.
The air around it warmed, just slightly — like the breath of something sleeping.
For a moment, it looked normal.
Ordinary.
Harmless.
Almost.
"Alright, sealed form," he said quietly.
"Minimum output. Let's see how 'safe' you really are."
He lined up his stance, targeting the mountain peak across the valley — a solid, jagged wall of stone crowned in shadow.
One breath.
One pull.
The sound wasn't a launch.
It was a rupture.
Air split apart.
Wind screamed.
The ground convulsed beneath his feet as shockwaves tore through the clearing.
His ears rang.
His vision blurred.
Then, across the valley, the mountain moved.
For a split second, it was intact.
Then light bloomed — molten red and blinding white — bursting through the cracks like a volcano's veins, tearing open.
A plume of dust and stone erupted skyward, drowning out the sunset.
The entire peak disintegrated in a thunderous roar that rolled through the forest like the breath of a dragon.
Zevion stumbled back, eyes wide, heart hammering.
His jacket whipped in the gust, dust biting into his skin, the air so thick with static it tasted metallic.
And then — silence.
Just the distant rumble of falling rocks.
Half the mountain was gone.
He blinked once.
Twice.
His mind refused to process what his eyes confirmed.
"…That was the weakest version?" he whispered, voice hoarse.
No answer.
Even nature seemed to hold its breath.
Not a bird, not a leaf — not even the insects dared to make a sound.
A single leaf drifted down beside him.
It turned to ash before touching the ground.
He looked at his hands — trembling, covered in dust and soot — and exhaled a long, shaky breath.
There was no internal debate.
No further experiments.
Just pure, primal survival instinct.
He grabbed the Bey, stuffed it into his bag, and sprinted downhill.
Branches whipped past his arms.
Pebbles rolled underfoot.
His heart pounded so hard it drowned out the crunch of dirt beneath his shoes.
"Okay—okay—no witnesses, no proof, I was never here," he muttered breathlessly, half laughing, half panicking.
By the time he reached the town's outskirts, his lungs burned.
He slowed only when the warm, comforting smell of street food hit him — grilled skewers, noodles, the normalcy of life.
He leaned against a lamppost, gasping, sweat mixing with mountain dust on his face.
He looked back once — far in the distance, a faint column of smoke still rose into the evening sky.
He swallowed.
"…Yeah," he muttered weakly, tugging his hood over his head, "definitely never going back there again."
Because no matter the world — Burst or otherwise — you never wanted to be the guy people pointed at when half a mountain mysteriously stopped existing.
.....................................................................
Patreon link: patreon.com/zevionasgorath