The next morning after the plane landed, Valt and Shu were accompanied to WBBA's headquarters.

For Shu he had gone to a lot of these meetings before, almost monthly, some for just housekeeping stuff or news on different tournaments.

But this meeting was different, not just because of Valt tagging along but because of the subject of the meeting.

Now walking through the hallways was a long line of great bladers ranging from different time periods and beys.

"Welcome to the Hall of Bladers. According to WBBA, the entire history of blading is here dating back to when blading first started. " Shu said.

Valt whipped his head around back and forth trying to soak up every cool portrait he could before they reached the meeting. His eyes were gleaming with wonder and amazement as he followed Shu.

Every blader was different with their bit beasts in the background. The beginning portraits Valt didn't recognize until he saw one that caught his eye.

Unlike the last portraits this one was different, in the portrait stood a tall boy with a serious look in his eye. The background was black with a shadow of a knight, hints of blue and purple were barely seen. The bladers eyes were also glowing blue-green in unison.

"You could also think of this as a museum for bladers, but downstairs they have more artifacts, beys and launchers.Up here is where they keep all the paintings."

Walking away from the portrait, Valt sped up trying to catch up to Shu.
"Hey Shu look, We're here too!"

Stopping at the end of the hallway were some of the more recent portraits of the world's top bladers like Free, Lui, Aiger and etc.

"How long has this been here?" Valt asked looking up at Free's.

"Some paintings are newer like yours and mine but some I think are older than they let on, but this hall has been here since WBBA opened up."

Between paintings there was a break in the hallway leading down two different hallways with more bladers; glancing at Shu, Valt choose a hallway and went down it looking at more paintings.

It was a dark hallway reflecting the mood of the bladers, there were a couple of snake pit bladers along with Phi and Hyde. There was also Lui but a younger version and Arthur was in there too.

Red Eye was also there but instead of looking Valt quickly walked past moving onto another, even though they were just paintings Valt couldn't help but feel like they were haunting him somehow.

Stopping at the last one Valt was about to turn back when something caught his eye, a painting was on the ground covered up by a sheet.

One peek wouldn't hurt...

Just as Valt was about to peek the sound of footsteps stopped him.

"Valt? Where are you? The meeting is about to start."

"Coming!"

Getting up Valt sprinted down the hallway back to Shu.

******

Opening the double doors Shu and Valt walked into a large room with a long table in the center. A handful of people were sitting at it, the only people Valt knew were Taiga, Lui and Kris while the rest were other team owners and employees. In the center of the table was WBBA's logo.

There was also a whiteboard and a large TV, the windows were closed and the only light illuminated from the ceiling's fluorescent lights.

As Shu shook hands with Taiga, Valt sat down looking around taking everything in. Shu sat down next to Valt and the lights dimmed. Taiga, who was sitting at the head of the table, stood up and turned the TV on.

"Welcome to the WBBA's headquarters. Now I'm sure our guest has many questions so before we begin is there anything you would like to ask Valt?"

Valt's hand immediately shot up into the air and on the other side of Valt Lui scoffed.

"Why are we here?"

"Valt, we specifically asked for you and Shu this morning so we can explain where we are in our struggle with Theodore and hopefully we can all learn something from you about him."

"So you guys want to compare notes?"

"Something like that." Taiga mumbled.

"Now then, today I am here to brief you all on Theodore Glass but in order to understand Theodore we must understand his history. In the beginning of his career Theodore started out with a job at WBBA..."

One of the team owners handed out Theodore's folder to everyone full of his personal information, resume and etc.

"In the beginning Theodore used to be one of the most powerful bladers for WBBA..."

On screen a picture of the same portrait of the old painting Valt had been looking at earlier. His eyes widened and his fists clenched.

"Back then Theodore climbed up the rankings easily earning his spot as world champion and for a long time he held that title not letting anyone get in his way. Theodore's bey was known as Shining Amaterios which is currently in our bey museum a couple of blocks away but the longer he held onto that title the more he started to go off the deep end. Shining Amaterios was eventually upgraded into Shadow Amaterios."

On screen the blue and white bey had changed into a blue and purple version.

"His goal was to be the strongest blader there was, one by one bladers fell trying to defeat him not even the other top bladers could touch him. He was able to turn anyone's power against them manipulating their minds and powers, Thedore had won until his brother Ethan defeated him. Theodore lost his spot and his way of blading."

"That's horrible." Valt said quietly.

Taiga nodded his head and continued.

"But unbeknownst to us now Theodore wasn't truly defeated and not all his dark power went away. Eventually his story was lost and the world moved on. A couple of years later Theodore had earned himself a place here as a promising young engineer. He was an innovative inventor, always finding breakthroughs in blading and training technology. Back then we didn't know that Theodore was still corrupted until it was too late."

Taiga looked down and his face darkened bent with anger.

"As time went on Theodore wanted to experiment with bladers seeing what he could do to help them get stronger but eventually Theodore got impatient for asking and decided to do things on his own schedule. After finding out his true intentions we were faced with potential jail time and lawsuits so we shut down his project before he could do anything dangerous."

"The Requiem project." Valt mumbled.

"But in Theodore's defense he was only trying to help them get stronger so instead his position was downgraded and things settled down. Eventually Theodore wanted to expand what he was doing and decided to take on a new responsibility of being the owner of his own blading team."

"Things were fine in the beginning until rumors started to spread a couple years later. These rumors had to do with the tests Theodore was doing on kids and kidnapping. Unfortunately we didn't take them seriously at the time. But it wasn't until Theodore constructed the Snake Pit was when the rumors stopped. "

"The timing was fortunate for him because the police were looking into Theodore. He needed somewhere to both hide and still make a living. He decided to buy an underground bunker that was previously used as an training facility for the Olympic Games which he later renamed it the Snake Pit. For a few years things had settled down with Theodore until a new rumor was being spread across the world. Now at the time we didn't know this rumor had to do with Theodore but it was a rumor of an underground secret training facility."

"At first we didn't take it seriously until the events of the Requiem Project. Theodore knew that in his quest for power would eventually collide with his job for WBBA so he severed all ties and broke off with his own team on his own agenda. But what he wasn't ready for was you Valt. You almost ruined his climb to power last year. If it weren't for you Theodore would've succeeded and all would've been lost.

"But you've only slowed Theodore, and now that he's in jail only makes him harder to stop and soon his followers will make themselves known."