The Friction Spotlight featuring Taylor Parker!

Hilde nodded along with Taylor when she finally cut loose. She understood the importance of family very well. She hadn't had a father or, especially, a mother for a very long time. She also knew what it was like to see and feel neglect from a parent though she had been an outsider looking in, and worse, an enabler of that behavior. She carried it with her and she imagined Taylor had carried a lot as well. She also thought it must have felt good to get it off her chest. Hilde smiled softly. "Quite well." She said and lowered her head.

"Thank you for being so insightful and forthright, Parker-san." Mai said. "How about we bring the seriousness down a little and return back to my set of questions." Mai smiled. "Before we got tangential, we were talking about the entropy title. In that spirit, what was the most embarrassing or funny thing that's happened to you INSIDE the ring? Outside? Any slip ups or fan encounters that made your cheeks burn red!?" Mai wagged her finger playfully. "Our editing room is exceptional! I'm sure we could pull up the footage if you'd like to telestrate the play-by-play!"

Taylor's face brightened considerably. "Haaaa, well lucky me all that stuff is on video in crystal clear high def." She leaned back to think if over. "Well... Tai Kamiya tried to hit on me once, and he tried to pull my clothes off in the gym. If it wasn't Tai, I would've been worried, but if we were both completely naked there still wouldn't be anything he could do about it." She laughed.

"Then... Well, in my first match, that Kei chick was like, hey look over there! And I was like I am so not falling for that and then whack!" Taylor pantomimed a slap across the face. "Didn't fall for it. Forgot to dodge it. Got slapped like an asshole.

"The worst one, though, if you could even call it embarrassing, was against the famous tag-team Raging Hard-On. Cecelia and Heather. Man... we fucked Heather up that whole match, and I went up top, way up high, annnnd she moved, and I felt my ribs break. Missing a fifteen foot splash like a bitch wasn't the worst part, though. It was afterward.

"I was in my old park, after that match, just chilling out on the bench, like, trying to get away from the world. My face was all black and blue from when Heather tried to put a hole through the mat with it. My ribs were fucked, and it hurt to breathe and everything. I just..." She shook her head while she thought it over. "Wanted to get as far away from Heather Southerland, and the worst, most humiliating loss of my life, as I could."

She took a drink of water, and then gestured up with the glass. "So of course Heather showed up. She was concerned. She wanted to help. She thought there was some big misunderstanding. And no I didn't like her, I still don't, but motherfucker, just fuckin' get away from me! Ya know? Fuckin'... She took my pride, ya know? Then she comes by when I'm trying to get away from her, all like 'awww, poor Taylor, let me help you'." She shook her head. "I don't think I've ever been so humiliated."

Mai cheered up as Taylor switched gears but by the end, her cat ears drooped. She couldn't help but feel sympathy for Taylor's plight. Mai had already experienced a range of humiliations at the hands of the AFW girls so she understood what it was like.

Hilde smiled a bit more wryly and flipped through her index cards. "As you've just noted, and touched on in the interview so far, your career has been marked by some heated relationships. However, the most notorious has been with former champion Akashi Tanikaze. How do you go from friends, to rivals, to hated enemies and back again? We've all seen the matches, but how did that develop from your point of view?"

Taylor breathed a laugh with a wry smile, and reached up to touch the kanji Imouto tattoo on her neck. "Okay, lemme just say that Akashi is my sister. I love her like family, and nothing can change that.

"That being said, for a long time, all I wanted was to fuck that bitch up!" She laughed out loud. "And it's funny now, I guess."

She took another sip of water. She felt like she'd been talking for hours. She felt like she could go on for hours, too, but she wondered when people would get sick of hearing her talk.

"So I had a match against Karina Rine. Crazy girl. I messed with her sister once in the gym, and she wanted to come out and get revenge on me, but I didn't know who she was at the time. So I was beating her up, but stuff sort of took a turn. Then her sister came out, and they both came after me. Karina grabs her guitar and started swinging, and she crushed me in the stomach with it like she was aiming for the back of Shea stadium. Dropped me, beat the shit out of me, and when she went to finish me off and crack open my skull, bam. Akashi showed up and knocked her the fuck out.

"I had met Akashi a few days before, in a bar. We got drunk, fought a little, went to the gym and I passed out in the locker room. I... Had some trouble accepting her help at first. Like, no one had ever really stood up for me like that. I didn't get it. But we were pretty cool after that and stuff, she was pretty much my best friend. But at the same time, I always felt like she looked at me like a project. Like I was some poor, stupid little girl, and she was the, like... what's the word for, like, charity stuff? Anyway, like she was doing me a favor. I didn't feel like she respected me.

"When she lost to Gatt, I was just... Crushed. I hated seeing it. I thought she gave up and let her have it at the end. I couldn't believe it. Then, after that tag match where my guts exploded, and after Brittany put me in the hospital... We kind of got into it for real, ya know. We said a lot of shit we didn't mean, but I think we laid out all the shit we did mean, too. She headbutted me, and I threw her out, of my apartment and my life. I did the same with Johnny, too, because if Akashi could betray me like that..." She shook her head. It hurt to think about.

"But we did what we had to do. All of two-thousand-twelve, we were just at each other's throats. We didn't speak, really. Then at Avalanche... See, I had always been alone. It's one thing to be afraid to get your ass kicked, it's another to not have anybody. That match at Avalanche was all my worst fears rolled up in a bamboo cage, and losing it was the best thing I ever did. I will totally never do another I Quit match, though, man." She laughed whimsically.

"But yeah, we sorted it out. I realized that we really were family, and that's forever. We might fight and stuff, but like our natural state... is family. I wasn't alone. I wasn't afraid of being alone." She paused when she felt the catch in her throat, and smiled helplessly at Hilde.

"Akashi changed my life."

Hilde nodded. "That's a good segue." She said and flipped her index card. "You've also had some other rivalries. You've been known as a bit of a tempest inside the ring but also as somewhat of a 'crusader of justice'. You have a never give up attitude and the fans enjoy that about you. However, you've also never won an 'I Quit' match as you've talked about already. How do you reconcile something like this inwardly?"

"A what??" Taylor's face lit up at the term. Her royal blue eyes sparkled as her grin grew until it ran out of room, and an incoming giggle-fit overflowed into hilarious, infectious laughter. "A crusader of justice?" More laughter. "Man, Hilde, you got me all wrong. Justice? I'm just glad I didn't end up in juvie!"

She calmed herself down and coasted to a stop. "[size=85:3dhcqt44]Whoo..." She wiped her eyes. "Anyway. Well, you could say the same thing about when I quit AFW. I didn't quit in the Adrian match because I didn't have the stones to keep going, I quit because I had the stones to tell Lukretia to go fuck herself and not play her game. I know what happened in that match, and if I had to do it again I'd still let Adrian off the hook, because that's the right fucking thing.

"And with Akashi, all I did was tell the truth. The match isn't as important, ya know, I'm more than my win-loss record in the ring. And I'm more than my career. I quit AFW when I solved the problem that put me there in the first place. I didn't bitch out and run away from it, I moved up and moved on. I came back, of course, but... I wouldn't change any of that, man, I'm stubborn as hell."

Mai giggled along with Taylor. Hilde kept her composure, smiling, adjusting her glasses, covering her mouth and doing other small gestures to conceal her blush and stifle her guffaws. She was thankful it settled rather quickly and when Taylor was finished, she was ready with her next question. Taylor seemed to be picking up things quite well and Hilde was able to transition seamlessly into her next question.

"Let's talk about that, your break, your retirement, your injury. It came as a shock to most people. Tell us more. How did you come to make that decision? What was it like during the break? What were the low points? The high points?"

"I'm not sure how bad it was after the tag match, but I know that by the time Brittany was done I had three fractured ribs and a pulmonary contusion. So it hurt really, really bad to talk, laugh, sit up in bed... and the worst was that I got sick, too. Having to cough or sneeze was worse pain than I've ever had in the ring. I coughed up blood for the first few days.

"That was a really bad time, though. I didn't leave my apartment much. I was too embarrassed and ashamed and angry and whatever else about being in that state, ya know, I didn't want anyone to see. I couldn't train. I could barely put on a shirt. I ended up wearing just a zippered hoodie most of the time. I just remember sitting around in the dark, trying to breathe as little as possible and fighting off a cough or a sneeze, and just sitting by myself on the floor and crying. I don't recommend that whole thing to anybody.

"Concussions aside, the next injury was when I broke my right hand on Akashi's big, stupid head. That one was okay, it didn't hurt that bad. And it was okay, because like I didn't need it after that. I know I've answered this a lot since I left, but I'll just say that I decided to quit because I got what I wanted out of AFW and pro wrestling, and I just didn't want to fight anymore. Before, I was fighting because I was scared of being hurt, and scared of being alone.

"But I kinda proved everything I needed to. To myself, anyway. Thanks to Akashi and Cassie, and of course Johnny, I just wasn't afraid of the same stuff anymore. I didn't have the drive to keep doing it. When I quit, it was mostly hard because of Kashi, but really it was like being freed from jail.

"Once I got out, I spent almost a year just doing my thing. I got to be a housewife, which was cool. That's definitely got it's benefits..." She stuck out her tongue and gave a devilish grin. "And that's when I started working with this after school program, like for kids. I spent time reading for the first time, and really getting into gymnastics and tricking, and I started lifting and strength training with Johnny. I realized eventually that what I really wanted to do was wrestle. So here I am, doing the same thing. But it's all different now."

"And what ultimately made you decide to return? Was there a specific moment that made you say 'aha! I have to go back to wrestling?" Mai said, lifting her index finger for emphasis and grinning.

Taylor shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I think everyone else already knew it by the time I figured it out. When I left, it was for good reasons. It was the right thing for me to do at the time. Eventually, though, the reasons turned into more like... I can't go back because I don't want to go back on what I said, ya know. I didn't want to look like it wasn't a real decision when I left. But... wrestling was always in my head. It's in my blood. It's what I have to do right now. Plus I don't want to be the only one I know who isn't in the business."