Forcible Entry (for acuya)

Overconfidence is usually a slow and insidious killer, but in this case it was pretty quick and direct.

One second, she'd been launching off the wall, throwing what, in her mind, may as well have been a finishing strike.  The next, a grim sense of reality had set in, as the much bigger (and far from finished) Styx had caught her in a crushing bearhug.  The realization that Abattoir had made a huge mistake set in right about the same time as the agonizing sensation of being squeezed like a lemon.  She squirmed, trying to break free, but she only had one arm free and not nearly enough leverage.

Alright, what to do?  She had to figure something out, and fast.  With one available hand, she could throw a couple rights to Styx's head and try to stun her into releasing, but from her current position they'd be 'arm punches' - weak, momentum-less strikes with no windup.  Styx was tough, she'd probably just shrug them off and squeeze her again--

--like she was doing again, right now.  Abattoir's vertebrae popped in a couple places as her back arched, and a surge of white-hot pain shot up through her torso.  Despite her pride, a telltale hiss of pain escaped her, magnified through the respirator for Styx to hear.  Abattoir cursed inwardly, hating herself for showing such weakness.

Bracing her free hand against Styx's face, she tried to push off and free herself.  No good, the grip was too tight, and she'd started to lose feeling in that arm.  The edges of Abattoir's vision darkened a little, and it was clear that if she didn't do something drastic, she'd have basically dug her own grave.  The indignity!  Undone by her own hubris.  No, that was unacceptable.  She had to escape this, and she had to do it now.

Leaning backwards a little, she shifted their combined weight toward the wall behind her, then planted both her boots against it.  Abattoir took a deep breath - if this didn't work, she'd probably be screwed, but hey, valar morghulis - and shoved off the wall hard, trying to throw them both totally off-balance.  Since Styx was supporting the weight of both combatants at once, the impetus was on her to stay upright; if not, they were in for a crash landing, probably through one of the hallway's many doors and whatever room lay beyond.

Styx's arms snaked around Abattoir's tinier body and flexed to their full size, as she grabbed her own arms to secure the hold. Her chest swelled, veins popped, and she barred her teeth as a feral growl rolled over her lips. A long, powerful cry, like a lioness finally nailing down a tough kill. She snapped her teeth at Abattoir's face and smiled with a full grin, showing her pearly whites.

"Gotcha."

She'd only managed to capture one arm with the hold, but that was no big deal. The little bitch was secured, and she even if she tried to throw a punch like that, she didn't have nearly enough power or leverage to make it do anything worse than pissing Styx off, and Abattoir had to know how stupid a course of action that was. She was squirming, putting up a fight, but it wasn't doing anything but tiring her. It had some comedic value, too.

The only problem was that Abattoir wasn't making nearly enough noise. Styx liked her victims to be vocal, and she just had to hear what a scream sounded like through that mask. She redoubled her efforts and got a little hiss out of her, but it was nowhere near what she craved.

"Hey, come on," Styx pressed their faces together and breathed hard all over Abattoir's cheeks. "Make a little scream for me, give me something. You should be thanking me - most girls around here?  They'd strip you and do some freaky shit after they kicked your ass. Me, I'm just going to beat the shit out of you. Lucky bitch."

Judging from the palm that was suddenly thrust into Styx's face, Abattoir wasn't seeing things in the same light, though it was mostly true - the women of Friction in particular didn't seem to put much value into trivial things like consent. It was funny. People always gave her crap for beating people up, but they went far easier on girls who did far worse. Why? Because the average Friction fan was a sick, perverted, stupid fuck.

The thought made her have a rueful sigh, but she was quickly knocked out of it when Abattoir showed some fresh signs of life and kicked off the wall behind her. Of all Styx's many, many talents, a fine sense of balance was never one of them. She stumbled, back, back, back, and then she went into a wild fall.

She let Abattoir go as they wound up tumbling through the door of a nearby lockerroom, crashing hard on the tiled floor insinde. A couple of naked ladies screamed and scattered away from them, quickly running to gather their towels. Styx would've loved to get a good look at them, but the momentum of the fall sent her bald head into one of the lockers, hitting hard enough to leave a sizeable dent in the metal. Her eyes screwed shut as her skull flarred up with hot, pulsing pain, and she started to roll over to her feet to try and get back up.

"Gonna end you, bitch." Styx used one hand to grab the nearest bench for support as she rose, and the other to nurse the bleeding wound on her head. "Swear to God, you'll have to fucking buy the hospital room they put you in."

Styx was right, of course.  Abattoir's second interview for AFW had required her to watch a highlight reel for the organization.  Up until that point, she'd been under the mistaken impression it was an MMA organization (the perils of not speaking the local language and asking the wrong people the wrong questions) and had just about walked out of the offer after watching thirty seconds of writhing and squealing and penetration.  Reassurances that there was 'room for all kinds' and, more importantly, the promises of a desperately-needed cash flow had kept her on board.

It was a moot point, anyway.  She couldn't think of a worse fate than giving River Styx what she wanted at the moment.

That last-ditch effort to escape the bearhug worked, for a given value of 'worked' - they crashed through a door and unceremoniously skidded across the floor of a locker room, which was a lot less forgiving than it looked.  Abattoir hit the tiles, rolled to one side, and promptly collided with the side of a wooden bench, knocking what little air remained from her lungs.  With a pained wheeze, she scrambled over towards a bank of lockers and started dragging herself upright, determined to beat Styx to her feet and press the advantage.  

Actually, this locker next to her was open - one of the room's previous occupants had been digging around in it shortly before the fight had crashed their changing session.  This was a wrestling organization.  There had to be a weapon in it, like brass knuckles or a length of pipe or...no, this was a giant vibrator.  Pass.  Economy-sized bottle of silicone gel.  Pass.  And a...what even was this thing?  Did nobody in AFW know how to survive a knock-down drag-out brawl?  With a huff of frustration (and a slightly red face), a chagrined Abattoir threw up her hands and turned her attention back to Styx, who had managed to get back up in the meantime.

Something about the larger woman's words touched right down on her last nerve.  It'd been hell, last time.  Convalescence, physical therapy, bills...a nagging pain that still sometimes flared up in her jaw.  She self-medicated regularly with her drug of choice (absinthe, the real stuff, not the Czech knockoffs), but even when the physical pain dulled there was always the embarrassment.  The humiliation.  No, she'd never rest easy until she settled this.

A tiny spattering of Styx's blood was still on her face, from when they'd been up close in the bearhug.  Abattoir reached a gloved hand up and smeared it alongside her cheek, staring the brawler down.

"Never again," she snarled, and charged forward to lock up, hoping to grab a clinch.

There was a moment, when Styx was rising to her feet and she saw Abattoir reaching into an opened locker, that she was worried, surprised, and overjoyed all at once.

The worry came from the realization that someone might actually beat her to using a weapon in a fight, for the first time in both her professional and unprofessional careers. The surprise came from Abattoir actually having enough balls to use a weapon in the first place, something Styx couldn't say about 99% of the active roster in Friction. The joy came from the minute possibility that she might get some serious violence going on in this brawl.

The worry and joy quickly disappeared when Abattoir pulled out a pair of empty hands. Nothing useful in the locker, and it wasn't really a big shock. The average Friction girl didn't even know how to spell 'hardcore' and would probably faint at the sight of blood. Of course they wouldn't keep a weapon in their lockers, and the arena was appalingly short of good blunt objects to use. That was why Styx liked to bring her own party favors for occasions like this...

...at least, she did most of the time. But as Styx rose and reached into her pocket, she found that the brass knuckles she always carried around were missing. The dufflebag. She'd put the stupid things in the dufflebag, because she hadn't anticipated getting into a brawl on the way out of the arena. Rookie mistake. "Fuck's sakes..." She muttered and spat off to the side.

Styx shook her head as she made her way back to her feet and prepared to bring the fight to Abattoir, but to her great surprise that wasn't necessary. Most women had the good sense to try and avoid clinching with someone who outweighed them by nearly fifty pounds. Not this one. No, she was jumping headfirst into the danger zone.

The sheer idea of Abattoir bringing her into a clinch was surprising enough by itself. Coupled with the way she'd growled her defiant cry, it was enough to take Styx off guard and push her a few feet back before she put her foot down and stopped the advance cold. She accepted the clinch and pulled Abattoir in tight, staring fierce at her and, for the first time in a long time, having that stare thrown right back. She knew that look and she knew it well: this bitch was out for her blood. She didn't want to pin Styx or get her counted out or something like that, she was actually out to cause as much damage as possible in whatever way she could.

A fighter that actually came for a real fight. It was a refreshing change of pace.

"Why're you even here, huh?" There was a mocking tone to it, but it was a rea question that Styx was curious on. A hiss creped out of her throat as she pushed back and tried to drive Abattoir into the lockers, throwing a hard hook into her ribs as she pressed on. If this crazy little firecracker wanted to do close range, Styx would give her close range. She'd get more close range than she could handle. "Got tired of getting stomped in the underground, now you want it to go down on TV?"

With her hopes of gaining a weapon-based advantage out the window, and size definitely not on her side, it was probably immensely stupid to go charging forward and lock up.  Then again, it didn't seem like Styx had managed to grab an equalizer either, and most of her hopes of keeping it tactical had gone out the window when she'd tried a flying elbow within a minute of the fight starting.  Abattoir wasn't as aloof as she thought she was when it came to this particular woman.  It was an important moment of self-insight.

For what it was worth, the sheer reckless ferocity of her charge seemed to have caught Styx off guard for a second.  Abattoir drove the brawler backwards, got both hands around the back of her neck in the thai plum, and was about to throw a knee strike when Styx put the brakes on and pushed.  It was like coming up against a bulldozer - all the force she'd mustered just stopped dead, and the next thing she knew, they were headed right back the opposite way.

If the impact with the lockers sucked (which it did - she could feel the wham of unforgiving metal all across her shoulders and back), the shot to her ribs sucked way more.  Abattoir gasped at the shock of pain that rippled through her body, holding onto the clinch for dear life and inwardly thanking whatever god was watching that Styx had missed her liver.  As much as she prided herself on her ability to strike it out with the best of them, standing in the pocket and trading with the brawler was proving over and over to be a terrible idea - she'd get beaten ten times out of ten as far as raw power went.  Of course, right now she didn't really have much of a choice.

So it was that Abattoir went for the most counterintuitive option possible: she actually brought Styx closer.  With her upper body pinned against the lockers, she hopped up and wrapped her legs around the bigger woman's waist, then grabbed double underhooks with her arms and pulled Styx in so they were pressed up together.  There wasn't much room to punch, and since she'd learned a few minutes ago that Styx had difficulty balancing both their weights at once, this would hopefully keep her from getting kicked or kneed while she figured out a strategy to keep the brawler from beating seven shades of shit out of her.

The question did warrant an answer, though.  What could she say that would unnerve her enemy?  Her limited experience with Styx suggested, well, "nothing".  The woman seemed totally fearless, and held the advantage in their mutual experience.  Well, so be it.

"Right now," Abattoir rasped, her face shoved up against Styx's for the second time in the fight, "I'm here for you."

It was a way better soundbyte than 'there was a language barrier mixup and I kind of need a mountain of cash'.  More importantly, Abattoir thought, it was true right now.  As much potential as it had to go south fast, this little scrap was satisfying as hell.

Abattoir wasn't just some random brawler, she was fighting with some style, here. River Styx didn't care much for martial arts - one of the most obvious statements ever made - but she'd been around enough to recognize a few on sight. This felt like some muy thai shit. Whether Abattoir had picked it up since they last met or always used it, Styx couldn't say for sure. The last fight was such a foggy haze and she'd spent so much of it peeling this bitch off the floor that she couldn't really recall tight details like that. Whatever the case, it was working for her, and it was a good choice. She'd never take classes or anything, but muy thai was one of the few styles that River Styx didn't think was a complete waste of fucking time.

Of course, it wasn't shit when you put it against raw, brute force, but that was expected. It wound up with Abattoir pressed against the lockers, and that was the only place it could've possibly gone.

Styx's heavy hook got a gasp from her, still nowhere near the scream she desperately wanted. It made her consider just what Abattoir was doing with the respirator in the first place, though. She didn't seem to have any troubles breathing or showing any fatigue - hell, if anything, she was having an easier time of it than Styx. Years of smoking hadn't done wonders for her cardiovascular health, and sweat was starting to show on her skin far earlier than she would've liked. This girl was surprisingly tough, on top of that. She hadn't exactly taken Styx's punch in stride, but she didn't fold like a deck of cards, either.

Maybe, maybe, she wouldn't do anything permanent to Abattoir this time. Girls with this much grit were rare, after all. It'd be a shame to put her out to pasteur this early on.

As soon as that thought went through Styx's fractured mind, she felt something hard constrict her at the sides - a slim but solid pair of deadly thighs. She bit down and kept a shriek from getting out, but she couldn't stop a growling groan from slipping past her teeth. Styx started to pulled away, but found herself pulled in tight under the arms before she had the chance, as Abattoir kept their bodies close. Too close. Styx couldn't get in any good shots like this.

"And after me..." Styx staggered away as she Abattoir's weight kept her teetering and tottering, making every step tedious and awkward. She wasn't heavy, at least no more than Styx could handle for a few minutes, but it threatened her wavering equilibrium. The floor being slippery didn't help things. "...then what?" She tried to hammer away at Abattoir's back, but found she couln't get any real impact from this angle. Not weak blows, but far below her usual standard.

"Don't tell me you came for the pussy around this place...dressed like..." She almost slipped up, but quickly slammed her foot down and corrected. "...that!"

The man who had trained Abattoir, a saint by anybody's standards (if only for putting up with all the shit that went with housing and training a practically-feral teenager), had a go-to criticism he'd often use when talking about her attitude towards combat.  "You fight," he'd always said, "like your life depends on it."  That was supposed to be a bad thing; where he'd come from, it wasn't unusual for some nak muay to fight as many as sixty times a year.  In fact, it was the primary source of income for a number of poor Thais.  So it was unsurprising that fights frequently looked like routine sparring sessions - nobody wanted to go really hard and risk injuring themselves.

There was a point where it fell short, though, and it was this: Abattoir wasn't doing sanctioned boxing, she was fighting people.  Hell, right now, she wasn't even in an official match, this was just a totally unplanned brawl for personal reasons.  Half the time, there was a possibility, however small, that her life did depend on it.  But perhaps most important of all, she had nothing, at all, to lose.  The system had wanted her gone from the time she was a small child, and the phrase "you shouldn't have been born" had been thrown at her more than once as she grew up.  This time was borrowed.  Better to flame out gloriously and throw every shot like it was her last than to fight like a miser.

Granted, right now, she was fighting pretty miserly.  Styx was focused on trying to hold them both up, and she had a few seconds to try to figure out her next step.  It'd have to be quick, though, this woman was crazy good and Abattoir had no doubt that if she took much longer coming up with a strategy, Styx would smash her into a fine red mist for the second time in her life.  She showed no signs of hesitation, and - this thought drew a rueful grin from Abattoir - also fought like her life depended on it.  Fortunately as they lurched, slamming Abattoir's back against the lockers again and drawing a yelp from the aching nak muay, the impact jarred a locker open and inspiration, at last, struck her.

"After that?" They were very, very close.  Blood trickled from under Abattoir's mask, lending a coppery tinge to the licorice scent on her breath (a side effect of her absinthe habit).  "Everything burns."

As mission statements went, she liked it.  Maybe they'd put it on a t-shirt after she beat up a few people.

Leaning to her right, she grabbed the locker door and slammed it open against them, hoping to bang Styx's arm hard enough to get her to release her grip.  This had the unfortunate side effect of clocking Abattoir in the side of the head, which stung like hell and left her ears ringing, but hey - fight like your life depends on it, right?

God, Styx wanted Abattoir to get the fuck off. Simple thought, and she couldn't blame her for going for something effective - she was obviously trying to avoid getting smashed and doing an excellent job of that. But Styx was simultaneously impressed and annoyed. Never before had someone been so close to her without the option to knock them out being available. It was infuriating, like a piece of steak dangling just out of a hungry dog's reach.

Abattoir's response took Styx by surprise. Not just because the words themselves came out of nowhere, but because they sounded like something she'd say. It wasn't that hard to picture, really. Styx was a six foot tall bald mammoth, Abattoir was dressed in all black with a completely inaccessible pair of lips. Both of them were as far away from typical AFW material as you could get, so it was safe to say neither of them came for the traditional reasons.

Lucrative thoughts started to blossom in Styx's mind, but they were interrupted when she saw one of Abattoir's arms branch off and grab a locker door. Why? That was a good question. "What the fuck are you-"

She learned exactly what the fuck Abattoir was doing when she whipped the door open on both of them. Styx's arm took the brunt of the blow and numbed up as the harsh metal crashed against it, forcing her to let up, but Abattoir wasn't getting away without her own slice of pain - she took it hard in the head. Hurting herself to hurt her opponent. Nice.

She let out a loud grunt and pushed off, releasing Abattoir and falling back as she rubbed her sore arm, trying to get some feeling back. "You're a year late." Styx spat to the side and reached, grabbing the bench by the far end. "Already claimed it. AFW's mine to torch."

She lifted the wooden bench up and swung it towards  Abattoir, trying to sandwich her between it and the lockers and not giving one fuck about the naked girl behind her that had even less of a chance of avoiding it. The bench made for an awkward weapon, but she was trying to cover as much space as possible. Worse case scenario, at least she'd clear more space for them to fight.

The bad news was that the world had briefly exploded into a garbled burst of white light.  The good news was that it was immediately followed by the sensation of falling right on her ass, which meant Abattoir had basically accomplished what she set out to do.

Thankfully, the top of the skull was nice and thick - if she had to choose a spot to get hit on, especially when she was expecting it, that'd definitely take priority over the chin or the temple.  Sitting up, Abattoir shook her head vigorously and tried to clear the cobwebs.  One of her gloves fumbled for purchase at the edge of the locker as she worked to pull herself back up.  Things were in slightly better focus now, although the clatter of footsteps was ridiculously loud as squealing women rushed out of the locker room and...

"There you are!"

Oh great.  The office fairy had found her, and apparently not viewing Styx as an active threat (she was, after all, leaned over a bench in the background and trying to recover from getting slammed in the door), had started dragging the dizzied Abattoir to her feet.  "They're in here!" she called out.  "With me!"  She turned her attention back to the masked woman.  "You are in huge trouble, missy.  Starting something like this is unacceptable to begin with, but on your first day!  We hadn't even finished orientation, and--"

Their roles were reversed, and this time it was Abattoir looking wide-eyed past her escort.  Styx had picked the entire bench up and, with a backswing that clobbered some poor towel-clutching girl, had arced the entire thing towards her like it was a bludgeoning weapon.  The nak muay had just enough time to intersperse her chaperone in the path of the blow - hey, she was in trouble already, might as well go whole hog - and jerk to the side.  The wham from the impact was prodigious, and made her all the more relieved at having movedl.  She'd already had a floating rib broken (by this exact same attacker, at that) and had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

Catching herself in a ready stance, she cast a bemused eye over the office girl - googly-eyed, half-conscious, and pinned in place like a dragonfly on a corkboard - then over at Styx - still holding the bench and probably about to swing again once she could get it free - and made an impressive, if probably ill-advised, decision.  Abattoir leapt up onto the bench, landed in a rather feral-looking crouch, and charged down its length towards her enemy.

Styx had maybe a half-second to react.  There would probably be something very bad at the end of this display of athleticism and reckless bravado.

Styx churned out a feral yell as she swung the bench like an ancient club, as if she had enough power to knock Abattoir's weird head clean off her weird shoulders. It was a heavy, unwieldy weapon, no doubt, but it was big, solid, and it covered a large area, perfect for striking down a foe that could manuever quickly. Seemed like a good idea.

So, naturally, Styx was fairly perturbed when Abattoir rewarded her for all that trouble by jumping out of the way. Speedy girl. Annoying. "God damn it!"

Of course, she hit the stupid orientation girl in the process, so that was a decent consolation prize, but nowhere near as satisfying as laying out Abattoir would've been. What was more, she heard the bitch talking to who she guessed was security, the same annoying security fucknuts that kicked her out of her former Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy. The security team around the AFW was a fat joke, rarely having to deal with anything more serious than a fan trying to sneak pictures for his blog, so they wouldn't be a big deal if there was just two of them. Maybe not with three, either. If the numbers started getting higher than that, though...

She'd deal with it when she could deal with it. For now, she had more pressing matters, chief among them being the little spitfire that was currently running towards her like she wasn't half Styx's size.

Styx was strong. Really strong. But she wasn't strong enough to hold the bench up while Abattoir was running on the damned thing. She was moving too swiftly to be caught this time, too, but that wouldn't stop Styx from trying. She dropped the bench and stomped forward to meet Abattoir's rushing body head on, trying to tag the girl with a right hook when she was close enough. It was a slow blow, not all that likely to hit, but she had to at least try to tag her, especially when Abattoir was coming at her with that crazed look.