Forcible Entry (for acuya)

"All right, now let's get a few from the side."

When the email had said to 'show up in ring gear' for her orientation, Abattoir had been a bit confused, but thirty straight minutes of posing for publicity photos in one of the arena's offices had quickly cleared up the details there.  It was tedious and boring and, above all, intrusive - lights constantly shining in her eyes, mousy interns poking her and adjusting her position, the constant flashes of cameras - and after a while she'd started coping by envisioning what the insides of everyone in the room looked like, but for now they were nearly done.

"Right," said one of the photographers, "now, like...a 'ready to fight' pose, or something.  Do whatever comes naturally."

With a shrug, Abattoir put her fists up and mean-mugged for the cameras.  The respirator masked her mouth, but her eyes were unmistakable, and that dead-inside stare could go on for days.  To their credit, the photographers had seen this kind of routine a million times - they barely flinched before continuing with their work.  

"These'll look great on the website."  It was one of the little office fairies, a tiny slip of a girl who'd probably blow away in a stiff breeze.  She'd been flitting around supervising the whole thing, and now at last she swooped in to accost the newcomer.  "Great job.  Uh, so I think we can get started on the tour of the arena, just to kind of get you settled in and all that.  Were...before we start, were there any questions you wanted to ask?  You know, getting acquainted with the AFW style, or just little curiosities about things you might have heard, or, ah...now that the photoshoot's over, did you want to take off the mask, or..."

Abattoir stared, unblinking.

Empires rose and fell in the time it took her chaperone, with sweat beading on her forehead, to move on.  In the background, one of the photographers coughed.

At last: "R-right!  Let's get started on the tour, shall we?"  Abattoir's worker bee bustled her through the door and out into the hallways.  "So, when you first arrive before a show, you'll probably want to look for a locker room, and to do that, you'll need to follow this corridor on the left, which..."

The nak muay sighed (which, considering the respirator, was really loud).  This would be a long, long afternoon.

River Styx made her way down the hallway of the Friction arena, dragging a bag of luggage behind her, dressed like she always was. Ratty, baggy pants. Her tattered grey A-shirt with the upside cross and the Heresy logo underneath, representing her favorite band. A few girls up ahead tried to discreetly turn around and go the other way when they saw her coming. Good. People were starting to understand who she was and what she was all about. And, with that knowledge, they realized why avoiding River Styx was a good idea, especially when she was looking pissed off. Which she currently was.

For the first time in Styx's life, she actually had money to spend. Enough to actually buy things. Good things. Quality things. Like, for instance, an apartment of her own. AFW management was quite insistent that she do just that, as a matter of fact.

For the past few months, Styx had been living in the Friction arena. It was a nice setup. She thought it was nice, anyway - a little section all her own within the Friction walls, where she could stuff all her crap and rest and read for absolutely free. Sure, it was smell, grungy, dirty. But it was her home, and she'd lived in far worse places.

But all good things must come to an end. Even when you're the only one who thinks they're good.

Security finally found her out, and as much as she wanted to fight for her space, it wasn't worth the effort. She could afford to live in a ratty little hovel of her own, no need to slum it up here anymore, especially with rent-a-cops breathing down her neck. It would be easier for her in the long run, anyway. No more sneaking into her home all the time, and she would have full access to running water. Maybe she could even get a dog. Always wanted a dog. Didn't the Japanese eat them or some shit? Fuck.

Styx's train of thought was promptly derailed when she turned a corner and found herself staring at two women. Or at least what she assumed was two women - one of them was so weird looking that it was hard to tell exactly what she was.

The girl this one was with looked like some dime-a-dozen bubbleheaded bitch that the AFW seemed to keep around in droves. Nothing important. But this other girl was a wrestler. Nobody but a wrestler would dress like that. All black, looking like a supervillain straight from the comics. Not a bad look with the Darth Vader mask on. Distinct, unique, not pushing sexy like it was going out of style. More than Styx could say for about 90% of the roster.

The only thing was, though, that this particular freak show looked familiar. Extremely, definitely, unquestionably, irrevocably familiar.

Styx canted her head to the side as she rubbed her chin, looking the girl over from creepy head to booted toe. "You." Her eyes narrowed as she began to sift through the memories. It was still fuzzy, but she knew this girl was linked to something violent that Styx had done. Which did not help the process of elimination much at all. "I know you."

"Now, as a competitor on Friction, you'll have access to all the on-site facilities, including a state-of-the-art gym complex with attached locker rooms."  What was this girl's name, even?  She'd said it at the beginning but Abattoir had been miles away.  Something agonizingly stereotypical, Trixie or Candy or something along those lines.  "Plenty of room to keep yourself in fighting shape, and who knows, with all these gorgeous ladies around, perhaps you might find something to get up to...eh?"

Something resembling a coy giggle began to rise in her throat, but a withering, red-eyed stare strangled it in its crib.

"Riiiiiight, and...and now let's move on so I can show you to the--ohhhhhhhhh god."

There was a brief, ridiculous moment where Abattoir thought she'd actually managed to bring an end to the girl's mind-crushing spiel of banter and arena details, and she relished in the terrified expression on Trixie/Candy/Whatever's face before realizing it wasn't directed at her.  The girl was looking past her, over her shoulder, at something else.  Almost offended, she turned to see what the fuss was about and, well.  You know those scenes in movies where two people stand on a roof and one of them cryptically says something about 'a storm's coming'?  It was like that, only the storm was a woman, and it was approaching them a lot less metaphorically.  

One of the roster, certainly.  There was something familiar about her - the size, the purposeful gait, the 'don't fuck with me' stare, the smooth scalp gleaming under the lights--oh.  ...Oh.

Several years prior, Abattoir (technically not existing as an identity at that time) had received something of a road-to-Damascus moment in her fighting career - a savage beating in Los Angeles at the hands of a muscular bald woman that had left her nearly comatose and severely injured.  Post-concussion syndrome had robbed her of the exact details of the fight, which was perhaps a small mercy, but the weeks in traction afterwards were burned forever into her memory - the pain, the exorbitant medical bills, and perhaps worst of all, the embarrassment.  Her jaw, which had been wired shut for a while afterwards, still clicked sometimes when she moved it, a memento from Styx's right boot.

She'd put on the mask after that, subsumed herself wholly into a new identity - something lacking affect and altogether less human - and never looked back.  But now, 'back' was in front of her.  Staring her right in the face.

What was her name?  Abattoir could've sworn she remembered it, but most of the particulars were hazy sensations - the other woman was too big, way too strong to muscle her around in the clinch, a dozen wild looping haymaker punches, the wet snap of a floating rib, couldn't stop the bleeding, she was going to die and it was going to be on the floor of some shithole fight club in Boyle Heights--

"...Ah, no, this is Abattoir," the office girl peeped, rather obviously hiding behind her charge.  "She's new here, Styx, you probably just mistook her for somebody, or..."

Styx.  That was it.  River Styx.  She remembered getting the joke seconds before losing consciousness; a moment of serendipity, not unlike this one.

She was a half-head shorter and had much less muscle mass, but that didn't stop Abattoir from stepping up and meeting Styx's gaze head-on.  It wasn't elaborate or sudden, no standing on her tiptoes or getting right in the brawler's face or anything like that.  Just a straightforward assertion - 'here I am'.

"Yeah." Her voice was naturally low and raspy, which worked well with the vague muffling effect of the respirator.  "LA.  Couple years back."

Maybe she wasn't such a fish out of water here after all.

Styx heard the office girl talking, but she didn't bother to look her way. She was just some pretty little thing that Lukretia hired to keep the hallways looking pretty. Nothing Styx hadn't seen a million times and nothing she cared to see, now. No, her eyes focus was squarely on the walking enigma in front of her. The little girl that was currently stepping into her personal space and staring into her sky blue eyes with blood red ones.

Styx's eyebrow bounced for a brief moment as the dark girl spoke - if you could really call the tortured, scrabled mess that came out through the respirator 'speaking'. She understood it clearly enough, and getting the date and location helped her narrow things down immensely. LA. Boyle Heights. That fight.

She'd been a tad drunk at the time, so the details were a little fuzzy, but she had enough flashes to make a coherent story. She'd been on the road like usual, making her way around the west coast. Needed a little money to tide her way for the next month or two, so she found a place that would give her cash to do what she did best: beat people shitless. She locked into a trashy fight club and hung around it for a couple of weeks, taking on all challengers.

She couldn't remembered exactly why she was so pissed off that night. Maybe someone made a crack about her hair that set her off, maybe she'd gotten turned down by some cute little thing at the bar and hadn't taken it well. Whatever the reason, she was in a rare mood. Thermonucluear. And she'd taken it all out this bitch with a name she didn't even care to learn before the fight, some poor girl who hadn't a single clue how deep the shit was that she'd gotten herself into.

Oh, well. That was life.

It was a good match. Well, not good, so much as it was fun. Fun for her. For the girl she was laying waste to, it was pure torture. Styx beat her to and fro, hither and yon, up and down and sideways and every way in between. To the girl's credit, she held on. She never gave up. Not that it would've mattered to Styx if she did, but still, nice chutzpah.

After that match, Styx collected her money and moved on, and she'd never heard what happened to that girl. She hadn't particularly cared, etiher, until right this moment. She couldn't help wonder what the respirator was for - she didn't recall doing anything that would've made her wear, but she seriously hoped that was the case, and she just couldn't dredge it from the sludge pits of her memory.

"Abattoir." She rolled her tongue around her mouth, from cheek to cheek.  "Slaughterhouse. I get it." Picking good nicknames was a lost art. Glad to see someone still practiced it. "Good to see you, 'Abattoir.' You're looking much less..." What was the word, what was the word. "...dead than the last time I saw you. Good on you."

Styx leaned down and brought their faces only a few inches closer. If it had been with two normal looking people, they would've looked they were about to kiss. Not with these two. "I had a good time, that night." A wild smile started to creep over her lips, slowly taking solid form. "Would love to do it again. Anytime. Now, even."

She'd barely even remembered.  This woman had nearly ended her career (and if it had gone much further, maybe even her life) and it'd been just another day in the office for her.

Well.  Wasn't this a hell of a direction that life had taken.  Here she stood, eye-to-eye with the crucible.  Very literally eye-to-eye, at that: Styx had responded to her assertiveness by escalating just a little further, and now she loomed close enough that Abattoir could've moved forward a half-inch and their heads would have collided.  She smelled faintly like a roadhouse - whiskey and smoke - and the frigid blue in her eyes rang familiar in the nak muay's fractured recollection of their last meeting.

"Okay," her chaperone stammered frantically, trying to insinuate herself between the two, "that's really...we try to avoid this kind of situation in a non-sanctioned context, so if you girls could just...kind of...separate, please, that would be great..."

At this point, it bears noting for full disclosure: although pride would never let her admit either of these things in a thousand years, Abattoir was 1) entirely human, with all the frailties and baggage that entailed, and 2) maybe slightly just a tiny bit afraid of River Styx.

It was natural, the experience had been traumatic.  Life-changing, even.  Any rational human being would feel the same way, and probably would have taken the way out that the office girl was offering them, or at least tried to de-escalate the situation a little bit.  Unfortunately for this particular corner of the Friction arena, Abattoir despised what little 'any rational human being' fraction of her that was left.  Not now.  Not when she was actively being mocked like this, openly challenged, by the only person in the country who'd ever seen her vulnerable.  No, this whole situation was running on prison logic - if she backed down now, she'd lose the high ground forever.  Styx would walk all over her, in front of everybody, again.

And so two things happened.  One, a hand reached out and piefaced the office girl away from them, sending her sprawling over the tiles.  Two, that final half-inch closed, and for just a split second, the two women's foreheads brushed together.

"Deal."

The shove that followed was sudden, but not nearly enough to knock Styx over - its true purpose was to put a little distance between them, which conveniently gave the office girl an opening to flee down the hall, tripping over her heels and screaming the whole way.  Terrified cries of 'someone call security' followed her all the way around the corner and into the distance.

Abattoir rolled back on her heels like a coiled snake, bringing up her fists.  Like she was daring Styx to make a move.

"Let's dance."

Whatever happened after this, however it went, watching that blithering office girl take a palm in the face and get knocked flat on her ass was entirely worth it. That alone almost made Styx want to go a little easy on Abattoir - there were only a handful of women in the AFW who were crazy enough to butt heads with her, and the league could've used a few more wrestlers with that sort of Give-No-Fucks attitude. It would be nice to see how she'd do with one of the many, many giggling, bobbleheaded bimbos who plagued the league.

Styx's grin had reached its full length by the time Abattoir pushed at her chest. There was a surprising amount of strength in it, more than she would've guessed a girl her size could put out, and the brawler was forced back a step from the effort. She took another step back after that one, getting the picture loud and clear. Time to make a little space. Okay.

She glanced at the fleeing girl, nonplussed, then right back to Abattoir - AFW security was a joke, so they'd have at least five minutes before they mobilized, if they even bothered and didn't try to turn it into a match. For the time being, it was just them. Two old friends, recollecting fond memories. With their fists.

"Love to." Styx straigthened back up and pleasantly pipped back to Abattoir, with a tone that'd be more appropriate if she had just challenged her to a game of tabletop tennis. "One sec, though. Need to take care of my stuff." She lifted up her luggage - a big, black dufflebag with about sixty pounds of junk - and swung it from side to side. "Hold this for me, will you?"

She tossed the dufflebag at Abattoir and rushed towards her the second it left her hands, using it to try and cover her approach as she switched over to full fight mode. The faux-pleasant demeanor vanished. Lips curled into a snarl, muscles tensed, fists tightened. She sincerely hoped that Abattoir had improved since they last met and the new looks wasn't purely for show. If not, she was about to have the shortest career in AFW history.

Styx took a big step towards Abattoir and lashed out, trying to drill her in the face with a massive right cross and letting out a gutteral roar as it went flying.

Orientation was turning out to be a lot more interesting (and probably more relevant to what her AFW experience would be like) than Abattoir had previously assumed it'd be.

In a way, despite the dangerous circumstances and the rising tension, there was something refreshingly familiar about it.  She'd never been the conversational, make-all-the-friends type - taciturn from an early age, to the point where one of her many foster parents had uncharitably described her as 'socially retarded' - and most of Abattoir's conversations were conducted entirely through blunt force trauma.  It wasn't quite as inelegant as it sounded.  You could learn a lot about somebody by fighting them; their movements, demeanor, tactics, and so on gave a lot of insight as to what kind of person they were.

Accordingly, the first thing Abattoir learned about Styx was that she didn't like to limit herself by following conventional 'fight logic'.  It was a stunning, ground-breaking insight cleverly derived from half her body weight in luggage flying at her head.

She caught it, of course - it'd be suicide not to catch it - but the momentum knocked her off balance a little, and by the time she'd managed to re-settle, there was a right hand coming at her face at warp speed.  Superior speed meant Abattoir could slip the punch, but just barely: Styx still grazed her lower jaw, jarred the respirator, and left an angry red blotch in the shape of her knuckles.  If that was just from being grazed...

Abattoir hopped back, dropping the bag between them.  Before it'd even hit the ground, she was swinging into a low kick towards Styx's outside leg - the one she'd planted all her weight on to throw that roundhouse.  It wasn't full force or overcommitted or anything - really more of an exploratory strike.  What did it take to hurt this woman?  How hard could she afford to go on her attacks without totally opening herself up to one of those crushing strikes?  The overconfident girl whom Styx had beaten the brakes off in their last encounter was gone, replaced by something altogether more calculating.

Of course, this was also a sore spot emotionally.  In a sense, it was a battle not just against Styx, but against the desire to go all-out and try to smash her into paste.  Down that road lay danger, and probably an unforeseen knockout blow.  She had to control herself.

Despite what people thought, there was some method to River Styx's methods. She lacked formal technique, sure, but she found she didn't need it. Her strategy was simple - use everything and anything to win. Hold nothing back. A scorched earth fighting style. Rough, crude, but it got the job done.

For instance, the idea behind throwing the luggage at Abattoir was to close the distance and draw and get into close range, take her down with a good punch while she was distracted and then go to town while she was on the floor spitting teeth. The idea had some precedence. While her memory of the last encounter was fuzzy, Styx distinctly remembered Abattoir having a distinct weakness to being punched in the face.

Of course, exploiting that weakness required her to make contact. Which Styx did. More or less.

Styx clicked her teeth as the punch barely scrapped along Abattoir's chin, missing criticial damage by a razor thin margin. "Lucky." Had to be. That was a golden set up. Styx was a slow mover on her best days, but even with that in mind, there was no way she could've dodged the blow on purpose like that. Must've been an untimely slip. An accident was the only explanation.

The kick to her leg, though, wasn't. That was on purpose. It was fast, blindingly quick, and while it didn't hit with all that much force, the sheer alacrity of it made Styx stagger back. Not bad on the form, but weak on the impact. A thousand more kicks like that and she might really be in trouble. "Harder, bitch."

Styx stomped back towards her and tried to cover a wide area this time, swinging her arm out in a powerful arc aimed at Abattoir's chest. Good coverage, nice and close, decent speed by her standards. No way she'd miss this time. In theory.

Well, that experiment had borne fruit.  Granted, it was basically confirmation of what Abattoir already knew: Styx was tough as nails and if she wanted to chop her down with leg kicks it'd take a lot of attrition.  Well, no need for the death of a thousand cuts when you had a giant fuck-off axe in your arsenal.

The trick, of course, was getting in a position to use the axe (which, in this case, was her knee strikes).  Back in the day, Abattoir had been fond of just muscling her way in, grabbing the plum clinch, and throwing knees; few had been able to get out without eating at least one, and at that point the damage had been done.  From what little she recalled of their first encounter, Styx had been a glaring exception, and Abattoir's strategy had run up against her size advantage in much the same way that a sentence ran up against a full stop.

Not that any of that mattered at the moment, because here came Styx again.  It was another shot, chest height, that would knock her absolutely senseless if it hit - say what she would, the other woman could throw some fucking bombs.  The thing was, though, it was big and sweeping and above all else, obvious.  All strikes were potentially dangerous, but the ones you saw coming from a mile away...well, a little less so.

The motion of leaning back so that the punch completely whiffed gave Abattoir a little extra reach, and she put it to good use.  Technically, the move was referred to as the teep, the Thai 'push kick', and had a long pedigree of basically being a leg-based jab that one used to gain or maintain distance, but with how close they were, it was less an elegant display of kickboxing skill and more Abattoir jamming her foot up against Styx's cheek and shoving her backwards again.  As the bigger fighter stumbled, Abattoir grinned at her - her mouth was hidden, of course, but an infuriating smirk was visible in her eyes - then leapt to one side, kicked off the wall, and dove for Styx's head with a flying roundhouse elbow strike.

This was a terrible idea.

It would be great for putting the exclamation point on a weakened opponent, maybe throwing a new flashy knockout on her highlight reel, entertaining some fans, whatever.  But this wasn't a wrestling match, there was no one recording for a highlight reel, and most importantly, Styx was by no means weakened.

Hubris and revenge had steered Abattoir towards a path she was about to regret.

In theory.

Another swing, another miss, and it was painfully clear that Abattoir didn't avoid this one by pure luck - no, she dodged it.  Hell, she fucking Matrix-dodged it, bending back like bullet time and letting Styx's fist swing overhead. It cut through the air with enough force for you to hear the air parting, and it would've done all sorts of damage if it hit. Instead, all she got was wasted effort. Wasted effort, and a kick. In the face.

Styx stumbled back as the kick smacked her hard in the face, genuinely hurting her and jerking her head back. It wasn't enough to knock her off her feet, but from the way Styx stared at Abattoir, it might as well have. Surprise didn't even come close to covering it. It was hardly the first time she'd ever taken a boot on the nose, but it had never been delivered with such grace and style, and it sure as hell had never happened before she even got a solid hit of her own in.

If that wasn't enough - and it so fucking was - the bitch was smiling. Oh, Styx couldn't see those lips while she had the Bane look going on, but she'd made enough manic grins in her day to recognize when someone else did it. "Cocky litttle shit."

Abattoir was confident. She had good reason to be, she'd been in control of the brief fight so far. But River Styx could be patient when need be - all she had to do to end this was to get in two, maybe three, good hits. Sooner or later, the boom would get lowered, and it would all be over.

Funnily enough, it turned out to be sooner. A lot sooner than Styx could have ever dreamed, as Abattoir pulled off some parkour bullshit and came flying right into her waiting arms. Literally. When she realized what the little brat was trying to do, she'd opened her arms wide to accept it. Styx wound up eating every inch of Abattoir's flying elbow, letting it crack her hard in the face and bust up her nose, finishing the job her kick had start. It hurt her, stunned her, but not enough that Styx couldn't do what she planned to do.

As soon as she was close enough, even through the pain, Styx closed her arms like a flytrap and tried to wrap Abattoir up in a powerful bearhug around her chest, wanting to use her own muscular body to crush the acrobat's smaller, lithe one. All the speed in the world wouldn't matter if the bitch couldn't move.