The holder of the shotgun, a dark man of possible Hispanic origins, prodded Kai to turn around, where another armed man stood at the ready to zip-tie Kai's wrists behind him. Once three thick plastic bands had been tightened till he could feel the circulation cutting off from his fingers, a heavy boot to the back sent him to his knees.

"Where is she?"

"Going to have to be more specific," said Kai, cool as winter.

"The only girl on this ship, smart ass."

"I recall two of the crew members being--" The heavy boot pounded his back again, or rather his poor hidden wings, knocking the wind out of him as he was thrown to the dirty metal plating of the deck.

"Young girl. She's white. All white."

He could taste blood in his mouth. How did they know? Why would these men want...

Dread realization settled over him like a blanket made of needles. Not that the shotgun barrel in the chest had warned him of anything.

"Check behind him." Growled the voice above him. "Don't bother being quiet. Freak ship's like a giant drum."

The other man, a huge beast of a man with flaming ginger hair, stuffed something into his right ear and more or less squeezed himself into a door that housed normal-sized men easily. Seeing the full size of him for the first time, the fear inside Kai percolated near to panic. What scared him most was that Kai didn't even question whether this was real or not. It had been all too real for him on too many occasions.

Damn it! He should have expected this!

Within seconds the ginger monster returned with Ayah, wings and all, tucked beneath his one arm like a sleeping back. She squirmed and squawked, but something like a thick muzzle had been put over her mouth, muffling her almost completely. Gray metal bands not unlike what the muzzle was made out of bound her shoulder to knees like the limbs of a giant spider.

The man with his heel to Kai's back gave a low whistle. "Lookie there, she's all grown up!" A faint plastic click, like a button, sounded. "We got her. Starboard side."

Unbeknownst to his captor, Kai's belly had begun to burn and his blood warmed with growing fire. But he couldn't just start flaming. He'd only get one shot before they caught on that Ayah wasn't the only inhuman one on this boat. Maybe if he could just twist around to get some fire over his back--that was impossible. Maybe if he could find Tyson...breathe at just the right time...

"So you've found what you want," he pushed out, spraying spittle across the metal deck his cheek was mashed against. His spit turned to steam instantly, and he prayed they didn't notice. "What have you done with the rest of the crew?"

"Tied 'em up. Duh."

Ugh. A realistic bad guy. What happened to the talkers? "Was a kid among them? Not one of the crew. Crazy guy."

In answer Kai got a kick to the side. If it weren't for his wings absorbing the brunt, he swore his ribs would have cracked. Instead he got a seriously bruised wing and the wind knocked half from him.

"Shut up," said the man above Kai's wheezes.

"OY!"

A grind of gears--a whistling whirr--and the steel toe boots besides Kai stumbled back, cursing. The shotgun barked out a blast. The ginger whirled about and let loose his shotgun as well, though it looked like a toy in his large arms.

Kai's eyes were to Dragoon, which mooved, unheeded by the gunshots, to the Hispanic's ankles. A horrible grind, like a table saw, and the man dropped to his knees with a scream. The ginger giant jerked around, startled.

"What?"

Then the blade was at his ankles, but there was a reason Kai never did his dirty work with a tournament grade blade. Slowed by the first pair of boots it had to chew through, it barely worked through the other mans boots before whizzing off, wobbling to and through.

That idiot!

Kai didn't have a choice now. Using his stomach muscles, he wormed to his knees, took aim at the back of the ginger aiming towards something up on the fire escape, and breathed.

Fresh out of his cocoon, weak, and barely aware of his fire, Kai had incinerated a thick log that would have taken hours to burn through for any normal campfire and nearly set Tyson's house on fire. At his prime, fueled by fear and with a month of practice, the gout of flame came out in a spew of scarlet-gold that cracked the air and turned the world white.

The huge man gave a horrible, animal-like shriek. The cases in his shotgun exploded with stifled pops. Within a blink his body was engulfed. The man writhed towards the edge of the boat, flesh melting as he moved and eventually collapsed

Kai flung himself between Ayah and the heat, cursing himself.

Oh god, please let me not have burned her, please let Tyson be farther than I think.

And even as he heard his captor scream in terror, a numb horror was dawning on him. Giving someone a quick kill from a distance with his beyblade had been one thing. This was completely another.

Over the shrieking and roar of his fire, someone landed heavily besides him. He felt the ice cold touch of a blade slide between his wrists.

"Damn! Ow ow--frick, it's like you've made him a freaking sun!" said Tyson.

"Get Dragoon!" cried Kai as his wrists fell free.

Kai avoided catching a glimpse of Tyson's face as he turned on the second man, who was staring up at him in dawning horror, a finger pressing in to his ear.

"S-second! There's a second--fire! It's fire!"

Kai sent a round house to his head and the man fell. Before anything else, he unclipped his launcher and loaded Silver Dranzer. He heard the thump of Dragoon returning to Tyson's gloved hand, then the click of Tyson doing the same.

"I can't get this thing off her," Tyson said. "It's made of metal."

"Have you bothered looking for a button or something?"

"I can only look so much in five seconds! We gotta get her out of the open."

They had the ocean to their back and walls of shipping containers three stories high on every other side, with only a little gap where the door to the shipping hold was. There was only a small space between the shipping containers and the wall of the building-like shipping hold for anyone to come at them, and somehow Kai doubted there were any more of them where he and Ayah had been, otherwise she would have heard them and quieted their conversation.

"Just look!" Kai snapped, leveling his launcher at this opening. The first man through there would be dead before he knew what had happened.

"Alright! Just don't breathe fire on me, Lord of the Flames."

"That's not even remotely funny." Kai couldn't comprehend how Tyson could take this all so lightly.

A loud splash behind him told him the giant had made it to the side of the ship, somehow, and had tossed himself over. That, and the vile taste of flame feasting on human flesh had left the air.

"You sure you shouldn't take off your coat in case we need to fly off or something?" asked Tyson, his fingers feeling over the legs of the metal contraption keeping her.

All Kai could make out of Ayah's express was the flicking of her eyelashes as she watched Tyson's search. Her crumpled feathers shivered.

"I defended myself just fine before I could fly."

"Yeah, but these dudes have guns! They nearly took my head off."

"Which is why I'm going to kill you when this is all over. I've had about enough of your stupidity."

"Excuse me, my 'stupidity' just saved your ass." Tyson's forefinger reached the back of her neck and a series of metallic clicks proceeded it. The metal bands went lax like rubber. Tyson caught her from rolling out onto her face. "Yes!"

Ayah's hands flew up to the muzzle. Tyson moved to stop her, but at a bark from Kai, went for his beyblade instead.

And not a moment too soon as the first man appeared, dressed in the same dull gray as his comrades. Kai never gave him the chance to fire his unknown weapon. In a rip so hard he heard his shoulder pop, Silver Dranzer shot from his launcher and across his throat. It bounced against the building in time to ricochet into the second man. It's luck wasn't that miraculous, though, and it sliced across the second's chest rather than his throat, leaving a thin, deep, but not mortal, wound.

Kai twisted around to slingshot his blade into the killing blow, planning to take advantage of the man's shock as he realized the body he had just caught was dead--but the second man didn't even catch his fellow. He didn't so much as flinch as the other crumpled back into him.

Which is where Kai lost his precious fraction of a second.

The silver beyblade flew--a long barrel leveled on Kai--and the whisper of blade against flesh was gone in the roar of the man's gun.

Pain spiked through Kai's shoulder, but his arm didn't give out. His shoulder didn't explode.

Rather, a fat, half empty glass dart plinked onto the ground.

Kai stared at it even as he felt his left arm go numb.

They want us alive?

"Kai!"

Tyson's shout brought him too. The second man had fallen next to his fellow, and their blood had already created a red curtain down the fronts of their necks.

He called back his blade and reloaded it. Ayah still scraped at her muzzle, her eyes wide and brilliant with terror.

"Are you seriously planning on just standing here and killing them all?" Tyson shrieked, his expression deathly pale. At least he still held Dragoon at the ready.

"Where else can we go?" Kai snarled. "Fly? Ayah and I have only flown once, and that was just drifting down the side of a cliff. We can't even carry ourselves let alone--"

Two more men appeared. Kai barely had the time to let Dranzer loose before dropping to the ground to dodge a fresh round of darts.

But he had forgotten the starboard side of the boat where a small space sometimes existed between the shipping containers and the side of the ship.

Five men closed in behind Tyson and Ayah, the first of which threw a ball on Kai just as he dropped to avoid the dart. It sprang open, another flat limbed spider, and clamped closed so completely about him it nearly lifted him off the metal deck. Ayah and Tyson toppled next to him, bound similarly. Just as Kai took a breath in to flame the nearest man to him, a thick muzzle, just like Ayah's, slapped over his mouth. Tyson gave a muffled scream as he was muffled as well.

The last thing he saw was Silver Dranzer flicking off blood as it spun.