Honor and Honour

River Styx could almost smell the hardcore title. She could taste it on the tip of her tongue...and she hated it. It was far too clean. Not enough grime. Not enough bloodstains. The hardcore division in the AFW had languished under Lukretia's watch, and the hardcore title had gone without the proper care it needed. It was a toy belt, something they had because they felt they were supposed to have it, and the league was woefully short of women with the courage and conviction to go gunning for the prize. It deserved raw women, willing to bleed for the right to hold it, not concerned with glitz and glamor, but just the thrill of the fight.

Styx would change that. She would take the title and draw heat to it, make the hardcore division something worthy of the name. She'd get the matches she wanted, on tap, whenever she desired. She'd get her own dressing room, and finally have an actual working matress to sleep on instead of a mangy hammock.

And to get all of this, to secure her #1 contender shot at the title, Styx just had to beat the shit out of Odessa Brock. How hard could it be? Not hard at all, especially if she worked over the big-tittied British bombshell before their match ever happened. A little cheap, maybe, but a nescessary precaution. Odessa had shown herself to be a bit more resilient and determined than she'd originally surmised, but she still wasn't fit to be near the hardcore title. If she was going to keep the division pure, she had to make sure the belt stayed as far away from her and women like her as possible, and that meant being proactive.

So, a little while after the hardcore tag match had ended and the crowd started to file out for the evening, Styx tried to track down Odessa in the backstage area, hoping to get a little private time with her and the brass knuckles in her pocket. She just had to find her first. Styx had a pretty good understanding of the area since she practically lived back there for a while, so it shouldn't be that hard to track down a black British woman with white hair amidst a bunch of Japanese people...

Odessa was quite pleased with the way the hardcore tag battle had turned out. The ending had been…somewhat less spectacular than she had originally imagined, but that only spoke, she supposed, to just how brutal she could get when she needed to be. Kaede hadn’t stood a chance. Odessa had beaten her to a pulp, and the reaction of the crowd—simultaneously wildly enthusiastic and rather shocked—had been understandable. Odessa was usually a woman of grace and glamor. Watching her take off her gloves, so to speak, for a hardcore fight was unusual.

But, if someone like her rival Cecilia could do it, then Odessa certainly could, too. She wanted to civilize a few more barbarians in the hardcore ranks, and she supposed that she would be starting with her erstwhile tag team partner, River Styx.

She made her way through the corridors backstage, happily accepting the congratulations of a few other wrestlers and AFW personnel as she tried to find the brutish woman. Odessa would make her way through the immediate backstage prep area, then head out down that corridor, knowing that River Styx would not be too far. She had wanted to talk, after all. Odessa headed towards the dressing rooms, figuring that Styx might be waiting somewhere around there.

People often assumed that, because Styx was such a loud and bombastic girl, that she didn't know how to be quiet when the opportunity called for it. Untrue. Totally. Years of hiding out in Wal-Mart bathrooms and slipping past trainyard security had given her a silent foot for special occasions. She knew how to mask her steps and how to weave out of someone's periphery vision. Styx could do stealth and do it well.

She put that technique to use when she spotted Odessa in the backstage and came at her from behind, popping out of a dressing room with one hand still clutching the knucles in her pocket as she approached. Styx took the time  to admire Odessa from behind, happy to see it was every bit as pleasing as the front. She always thought of herself more as an ass woman, and Odessa was pleasing all the way down...

No. No. Business, think of business.

Styx shook her head and groaned, as it seemed to take physical effort just to focus above Odessa's shoulders. "Sugar tits." She made herself known  with only a few feet to go. Good attacking distance. "Hey."

Styx was nowhere to be found, and Odessa was beginning to wonder if the rough girl had already taken off. Or perhaps she’s lying in wait for me somewhere, planning an ambush, Odessa would muse to herself. She phrased it as a joke, though, come to think of it, a wrestler like Styx very well might try to pull off something like that. Odessa would be mindful…

Just then, from a few feet behind her, Styx’s voice emanated. Odessa would turn around quickly, putting a hand on her hip as she would survey her erstwhile partner with a small smile. “Ah, there you are, my dear. I’ve actually been looking for you. You weren’t hiding from me, now were you, darling?” Again, she said it with a joking inflection, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

“Come, let’s talk, shall we? We can find a place to sit down and discuss our upcoming match, hmm?”

Styx kept it calm on the outside, looking like she'd just bumped into Odessa on the street, talking like two friends who hadn't seen each other in ages. On the inside, though, she felt like a chained junkyard dog, only she couldn't even see the leash that was holding her back.

She gripped the brass knuckles hard, to the point where they hurt her fingers and left deep imprints. Why was she listening to this? Why was Odessa being so nice? They were going to rip each other apart soon, shed blood and spill it on the floor. There was going to be a fucking war, and Odessa acted like they were scheduling a tea party. Styx wanted nothing more than to pummel her pretty, sultry, sexy face in, and damn it, now she was staring at Odessa's tits!

"Ugh." She averted her eyes and ran a hand over her face to try and hide the agitation. Didn't work. "Sure, fine, in there." She nodded her head towards the dressing room. That would be best, anyway. Nice and private, no risk of interference until the job was done.

If she could do the job.

Styx was unsettled, and uncomfortable. That much was obvious to Odessa, and the British woman smiled as she watched the ruffian fidget and shift her weight and run a hand over her face in a half-dozen little awkward displays. Odessa noticed exactly where her erstwhile ally and future opponent's eyes were focused, too.

When Styx directed her towards the dressing room, Odessa would smile and nod. She was aware of the risk she was taking, but she was confident that she could handle herself. "That will work for me. Lead the way," Odessa would say, as she would follow Styx into the dressing room, closing the door behind them once they were inside. Once inside, Odessa would stretch out her arms a little, trying to relieve a little bit of the pressure that she felt in them after the fight. She had bruises all over, though she knew that Kaede was much worse off—and Isabella, while no worse off physically, was probably in one of her moods.

"That was some match, wasn't it?"

Styx made her way in the room, though she looked over her shoulder the whole way. She didn't expect Odessa to turn the tables on her, the woman seemed too respectable and honest for that...but then, Styx hadn't expected her to beat Kaede into unconsciousness, either. Hadn't expected her to use weapons. A little caution was warranted with this one.

Styx sat down on the dressing room table and opened one of the drawers, making a nice little rest for her to set her foot down on top of and rest. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes she'd found laying around the backstage area. Pall Malls. She fucking hated Pall Malls, but they'd have to do, today.

She turned to look at Odessa, only to see her stretching and putting her prodigious tits on full display. Styx had a little, sniffling, annoyed grunt before she looked off to the side. "It was horseshit." There was really no sense in beating around the bush about it. "A tag team hardcore match is a neat little idea in theory, but it's a clusterfuck in action. A hardcore match with rules is like a chaste hooker. Doesn't work. Good fights, but I hate waiting to brawl. Shouldn't be like that."

Odessa wanted to make sure she wouldn't be attacked from behind, and so let Styx enter the room first. She had to admit, the fact that she could, if she so desired, attack a wide-open Styx from behind was very...intriguing. But why would she right now? There was no reason for them to fight now. They would schedule their match, and, whenever they decided to have it, they would fight then. But now they had no reason.

Odessa would remain standing while Styx sat down on the table. The ebony beauty still felt a little adrenaline left over from the fight, and she didn't really want to sit down and rest just yet. That time would come later.

Odessa probably shouldn't have been surprised by Styx's strong reaction to their match, but it was negative enough to make her raise an eyebrow. "Well, I suppose I can't argue with you there. A tag match does seem ill-suited for determining hardcore contendership. Although there is something to be said for patience. Regardless, our match will have no such restrictions."

Styx brought out her zippo lighter and clicked it open while Odessa spoke, letting the flame grow a bit. She started to put the cigarette to her mouth and light it up, but the last thing to come out of the British woman's succulent lips gave her some pause, and she looked back at her from her half-lidded eyes. She kept it calm, for now. As calm as she could be with her hormones dancing a jig through her bloodstream. But there was a wild, crazy glint in there, an ember that was still burning from the match and begging to get reignited.

"Our match." She spoke plainly and let the flames bite at the edge of her cigarette. "Before we get to that, there's something I'm curious about, bugging me. You..."

She tipped the cigarette Odessa's way, as a few ashes fell. "I keep up with the hardcore scene, here. It's fucking pathetic. But you, I haven't seen around it. Not until recently. And I don't think you were picked for the tag match out of a hat, either. You can wrestle, you're good in the ring, so I guess I'm trying to piece together whether you're even bothering with this and not, say, the Entropy or the Hentai or the World Title. Why do you want the hardcore title? Doesn't seem like your wheelhouse."

Odessa wondered whether or not Styx might ask her a question like that. It was a very reasonable question to ask, and, really, Styx wasn't wrong about the hardcore division being outside of Odessa's wheelhouse. "I understand your confusion. Even the more...feminine hardcore fighters aren't usually—well, they aren't usually very much like me."

She would tilt her head back a little as Styx pointed the cigarette at her. Odessa didn't smoke, and didn't want to get any of the ash inside of her lungs.

"And, honestly, I will be going after the Hentai title. And the overall title. Perhaps not Entropy, as I believe I'm a little too experienced for that at this point in time. As for why I've decided to throw my hat into the ring here...well, I can't say there's one defining factor. I think I've shown I'm capable in a hardcore fight. I'm not the first glamorous woman to fight in this part of the league—my dear Ceci Northman did, as well. To put it as simply as possible, I enjoy it."