The grinding clash of metal echoed through the warehouse, filling the space with a thunderous rhythm. Leone and Dark Wolf were locked in a brutal spiral, neither retreating.
Kyoya's eyes gleamed, sharp and alive. Doji's calm smirk remained, but his fingers tensed slightly on the launcher grip.
Without warning, Kyoya stepped forward, his voice slicing through the noise.
"Let's see if your rhythm survives in my cage."
With a sharp flick of his wrist, Leone veered off from the deadlock, rebounding off the stadium's jagged edge. The friction ignited a surge of torque, creating a wild updraft.
The air shifted.
The dust began to spiral.
Kyoya's command roared. "Lion Cage!"
Leone's rotations intensified, the stadium cracks amplifying the friction into a spiraling vortex. The air inside the warehouse condensed, sucked into the storm forming around Leone.
The Face Hunters felt it first—the sudden pull of wind, the swirling drafts tugging at their clothes, sending crates tumbling across the floor.
A deep, guttural growl echoed—not from Kyoya, but from the storm itself.
And then, it appeared.
A phantom of Leon—raw, primal, and untamed—manifested within the tornado. Its translucent form mirrored Leone's rotations, eyes glowing as it circled the battlefield.
The warehouse's upper structure groaned as the cyclone's pressure intensified, beams creaking under the strain.
Doji's gaze flickered upward, but his smirk remained. "A cage, is it? Let's see if you can hold me inside it."
Leone, encased in its self-forged tornado, charged forward with crushing force, the phantom Leon moving in sync, its spectral claws slashing through the swirling air.
Dark Wolf met the charge, its spin shifting, adjusting to the erratic currents. The collision was deafening. Sparks shot outward, beams rattled, and fragments of debris rained down.
The warehouse's upper panels buckled, one section giving way as the tornado's force burst through, exposing the open sky.
Kyoya's storm was no longer contained.
The cyclone engulfed the stadium, the Leon phantom growing sharper, more vivid, as if feeding on Kyoya's defiant will.
Doji's stance, however, didn't break.
He read the airflow, noting every micro-shift, every pulse within the storm.
"Impressive. But storms are loud. Precision cuts through loudness."
With a subtle tilt of his launcher, Dark Wolf adjusted its spin, slashing into the tornado's outer currents with precision rotations. The rhythm disruptions began slicing the airflow, creating brief gaps in the cyclone's structure.
Leone charged again, its path wild and forceful, but the air pressure it fed on was beginning to fracture.
Kyoya's teeth gritted. "I don't care how clean your cuts are. This storm doesn't kneel."
He pushed Leone into a reckless rebound, amplifying its spin velocity through sheer will. The Leon phantom snarled, its spectral claws ripping through the collapsing cyclone gaps, trying to reclaim dominance.
Doji's fingers remained steady. "Your storm is fierce, Kyoya. But even the wildest storms exhaust themselves spinning in the same cage."
The warehouse trembled as the Beyblades clashed again, this time with even greater ferocity. The Leon phantom and Dark Wolf's rhythm cuts collided in a battle of persistence versus precision.
The Face Hunters could only watch, unable to step in, their eyes wide as their leader fought—not just Doji, but the limits of his own storm.
Leone wasn't yielding.
But Kyoya could feel it.
The storm's force was reacting to his will, but its foundation was fragile. Aarav's rhythm had carved a dent in his storm, and while his pride refused to kneel, the storm's spin was not as wild as before.
But Kyoya wasn't about to admit it.
He pushed forward again, voice sharp. "Storms don't spin by rhythm. They consume it."
Doji smiled. "Then let's see which of us spins last."
Their Beyblades clashed once more.
The tornado roared. The warehouse shook.
But the outcome… was still undecided.