Forcible Entry (for acuya)

The noise of the bench wrecking her escort's shit was enough entertainment by itself to consider today a success, but Abattoir had always believed in trying to push the envelope, and so here she was, running down the length of the bench and preparing to...uh...

Actually, if somebody were to pause time and ask her what, exactly, she hoped to accomplish, she'd be lost for words and then eventually, with a sheepish note to her voice, confess that "it seemed like a good idea at the time".  Really, there was no way this didn't end in disaster.  At the end of the day, though, 'disaster' was typically Abattoir's goal, so this was really nothing unusual.

Still, the way it played out in her head - flying knee, Styx gets bashed right in her smart fucking mouth, teeth go everywhere, a few dozen stomps to seal the deal, ride off into the sunset on her S1000R, roll credits - was very different from the way it actually played out - flying knee, Styx swung at her, and the two attacks collided in midair, knocking Abattoir off course and dropping her to the floor with a very sore thigh.  Her leg buckled a little as she landed, and now her breathing was coming hard and fast (a drawback of the respirator; it was very, very obvious when she was getting tired), but her fists were up and she was ready to throw herself at Styx again when security arrived on the scene.

There were...four of them, looked like.  Soft, undertrained, underequipped, probably never had to deal with more than the occasional overzealous fan.  Still, that was a considerable numbers disadvantage - despite what the movies tell you, one person is probably never going to win a fight with three or more people, and this was not looking great.  Plus, she was probably already in trouble with the brass; fighting the staff wouldn't do her any favors along those lines.

The nak muay's pale red eyes flickered over to the slowly-advancing phalanx of security officers.  Over to River Styx, as banged up and out of breath as Abattoir was.

Back to security.

Back to Styx.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

With little more than a bloodthirsty grin flashed in Styx's direction, Abattoir darted off to the side, vaulted the bench, and dove onto the encroaching security force.  It could maybe be called a plancha if you were feeling charitable about her wrestling ability, but in realistic terms it was more like the flying nothing, if the flying nothing was also bristling with knees, elbows, and a general hatred of all life on Earth.

Chaos erupted.

Styx got kneed in the face. Styx hated getting kneed in the face, especially when it was delivered by a little girl running hard right in her face. And it said a lot about her life that this was the second time such a thing happened.

The blow knocked Styx's head back in an arc with a trail of blood flying behind it, as the impact echoed throughout her skull. The hit would've been nasty enough if Abattoir hadn't had gravity and momentum firmly on her side, but they both came together for a powerful combination. The end result had Styx stumbling as the world spun around her, before the shock became too much and she was forced to take a knee. She ground her teeth down hard and pounded her fist on the floor - how was this bitch putting up such a fight? She'd annihilated her before. Dead bang. Beat her nigh unto death. And now Abattoir wasn't just holding her own, she was excelling in the fight. As confident as Styx was, even she couldn't say with 100% certainty that she'd come out on top if this went on much longer.

Of course, it wasn't like Abattoir was resting easy, either. Styx could hear her breathing. The entire country could hear her breathing, really. It sounded like the fight was going hard on her, and her body was begging for a little break. Styx knew the feeling. She doubted it meant a damn to either of them, and she knew that certain when Abattoir raised her fists up. "Now, we're talking."

Styx had a mad grin for all of two seconds as she charged forward, before it was turned into a fierce snarl as security made their way in. Four guys. Cocky as Styx was, she was not at all confident about her ability to take on four people at once, even if they were all a bunch of overpaid, overfed rent-a-cops. The plan here was simple: barrel through them, grab her shit, make a break for the van. Not her most glorious exit ever, but it would be better than getting dogpiled in a Friction lockerroom.

Her plan was shot to hell, though, when Abattoir did a suicide dive into the hoarde, as if she could take them all on by herself. It would've been a hell of a distraction, and Styx could've made her way out, easy...but River Styx, running from a fight, when the new girl stays and toughs it out? Couldn't happen.

She reached into her pocket and pulled a little bag with black powder, the one party favor she had remembered to keep along with her, then popped it into her mouth as she walked towards the chaos. The guards were so busy dealing with Abattoir that they'd almost completely forgotten about Styx, an error she corrected when she grabbed the nearest one, spun him around, and spewed the Black Tar all over his face. He let out a girlish shriek as he recoiled and rubbed away at his eyes, but there was no need for him to panic - Styx planned to take him out of his misery, after all. She grabbed the side of his head and rammed his face into the nearest  locker, dropping him into a crumbled heap on the floor. Problem solved.

One down.

That took all of three seconds, and in that time one of his buddies got it in his thick skull that he could avenge his fallen brother. He pulled out a nightstick and swung it hard, cracking her hard in the arm. The same arm that Abattoir had slammed the locker on, just a minute ago. That pain was all coming back with more added on top, and it soured Styx's mood a little bit.

"Mother-" She expressed this anger by grabbing him by the neck as he started to wind up for another swing, lifting him straight in the air while his scrawny legs dangled below, and chokeslamming him right on top of the guy he'd been trying to save. A neat, little, lifeless pile of losers."-fucker."

She gave them both a quick kick their sides, then looked over to see how Abattoir was doing. Styx sincerely hoped she wouldn't have to fuck up every loser in this room before her time was done.

Abattoir was incredibly fortunate that AFW security didn't carry chemical munitions or, god help her, tasers.  That would've pretty much ended her little insurgency the second she'd made a move on four officers at once.  Still, from the moment she stage-dived onto the mass of humanity to the point where she hit the floor (and onwards), she found herself clubbed from all sides with a storm of batons.  She covered up on her way back to her feet, of course, but that only did so much good when she'd just gotten literally punched in the ACL with enough force to knock a horse over - and that was after the giant brawl.

Conveniently, though, one of her attackers quickly disengaged, followed by another.  Apparently Styx had her own problems on the other side of the room.  That meant two guards on her, and two...well, she could probably manage that.  Abattoir threw a wild, aimless elbow, and was rewarded with a cry of pain when it struck home against what felt like a rib.  That brought an end to another stream of baton blows, which left her, at least for the moment, with one guard.

He was still in the middle of raising the telescoping stick for another blow when Abattoir dove in and grabbed him.  It was the exact same strategy she'd just used against Styx - get in close and there's no momentum to anything.  This is especially true with a long weapon like a baton, which is why all the man could do is flail helplessly before Abattoir, lacing her fingers behind his neck, grabbed a full plum and dragged his head down directly into the path of a world-ending knee strike.

HOLY SHIT THAT HURT.  If she hadn't just wrecked her knee fighting Styx, she might've been able to stay upright afterwards, but Abattoir's leg buckled and she dropped back to the floor alongside the unconscious security guard.  There was just enough time to get her good leg under her as the second guard recovered, and she took a dizzying blow to the side of the head before being able to push off and dive onto the officer, taking them both to the ground in a heap of limbs and swear words.

Styx turned around to behold Abattoir atop the downed guard, her fingers in his mouth and gripping his entire head by his lower jaw, slamming the man's head against the floor over and over.  It probably would've made more sense if she'd been laughing hysterically or something similar, but instead, she was silent, just staring with dead eyes as the increasingly loud smack noises echoed through the locker room.

After a moment, the smaller girl paused and looked up at Styx. They seemed to be at an impasse.

Styx watched, silent and unmoving, as Abattoir unleashed the beast all over some dumb fucker's head, bashing him into the floor over and over with an eeirie silence the whole time. Brutal savagery, reckless violence, a total lack of empathy with an impressive mean streak...not bad. Not bad at all. This girl could do well in the AFW with that attitude.

When she was done, a haunting silence came over the room, only interrupted by the whimpering office girl in the corner trying hard not to be noticed by the pair of sociopaths she was trapped with. Abattoir didn't say a word, which wasn't the least bit surprising given how taciturn she'd been for this entire encounter, but this was a point where that didn't make much of a difference. Styx didn't have much of anything to say, either. Too busy thinking.

She saw this going down one of two ways.

The first had them just restarting the fight. Styx would beat the living shit out of Abattoir, especially when her knee was gimped up like that. She'd go down hard, but she would go down, and Styx would just have one more bitch in the AFW who hated her guts. Which didn't bother her, really. Hell, she'd love to get Abattoir in a real hardcore match. She'd been craving an opponent who wasn't afraid to get her hands bloody, and here she was.

Or Styx could take a more interesting route. More profitable. Less fun in the short run, but if things worked out like she was thinking, extremely lucrative near the end.

She stared at Abattoir for a moment, matching their dead stares, before the office girl's crawling body  caught her attention. She was desperately trying to make her way up and flee the room, likely trying to get more security. Not happening.

"Okay, Abs. Here's the deal." Styx walked over to the office girl and planted her foot down square on the bitch's back, keeping her pinned to the floor. "We can start fighting again, right now, and I'll beat the shit out of you here, or you can come with me, and listen to a little offer I got for you. If you don't like it, fine - we'll fight again, and I'll just beat the shit out of you, there." Styx leaned forward, putting a bit more weight on the office girl to make her squeal. "How's that work?"

Styx extended her hand to Abattoir, offering to help her back up. That hand was ready to turn back into a fist at a moment's notice, though, and Styx didn't bother hiding the caution on her face.

For the first time since the whole thing had kicked off, it was quiet. Abattoir idly smeared a couple drops of her blood across the face of the security guard under her. She was vaguely aware of Styx bringing an untimely end to the office girl's call for reinforcements, somewhere under the reverie of painting scarlet mandalas.

The woman's words, though, snapped her back to reality. As "win at all costs no retreat burn the place down if you have to AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH" as Abattoir's thought process usually was, there was perhaps a certain wisdom in taking Styx up on her offer. She hadn't exactly come prepared for a fight (and despite the image she projected, preparation was important), and now she was banged up to hell, limping a little, and thoroughly tired. Lactic acid was making her muscles scream, and in the morning, she'd probably feel every one of those baton shots. Basically, if they resumed the fight, Styx would almost definitely beat her into the ground. She'd probably make the brawler work hard for it, but that was a moral victory at best - hollow, and not much compared to the beating she'd receive.

On top of that, the offer was a bit of a mystery. Mutually assured destruction wasn't that much of a motivator for someone like her (and, she suspected, someone like Styx). If they had to go down in flames to prove a point, they would. So what was driving Styx here? She could be bluffing, trying to pull away from having to fight any more...no, probably not. It was pretty clear that if they kept going, the odds wouldn't be on Abattoir's side at all. So if it wasn't any of that...

Alright. A morbid curiosity had overwhelmed her. Plus, discretion was sometimes the best path, and in spite of her incredibly obvious instability, Abattoir was sane enough to realize that. Cautiously, she reached out, gave just enough of a pause to steady herself, and then accepted the offered hand, letting Styx pull her to her feet.

Honestly, it was easier than getting up from that kneeling position on her own would've been. She wobbled for a second on the way up, then stretched in place, drawing a satisfying crackle from a few joints.

"Right." Abattoir took a wary step back, eyeing Styx (well, the Styx in the middle; she'd been knocked slightly loopy and it'd take a minute or two for everything to coalesce back into a single coherent image). "Lead on."

Right, good. Abattoir fell into the same 'crazy, but not stupid' category Styx liked to keep herself in. That was good, she could be reasoned with. At least to a certain point, and that would be where the negotiations began.

Styx nodded and headed out, scooping her stuff up along the way and making sure the coast was clear before they went too far. She was a six foot tall bald white woman and Abattoir was, well, Abattoir, so they weren't exactly going to be the stealthiest pair, but she knew the building well enough to get them where they needed to go without attracting too much attention on the way. A back door here, a service entrance there, a few moments hiding in one of the lesser used bathrooms, and they'd gotten where they needed to go. The two of them would likely get some blowback for beating up the hired help later, but by then, no one would give enough of a shit to do anything. It wasn't like people hadn't gotten away with crazier crap on the AFW without repercussion. On live television, no less.

Styx's panel van was parked out in the back of the arena, around where all the vendors came for drop off. Big, white and plain, it looked like something a business would use for transportation, and that was exactly what it was - before Styx took it and stripped it clean, it belonged to some plumbers. Now, it was her personal transport/mobile headquarters/getaway vehicle.

She popped open the back door and hopped inside, where she immediately bumped against some of her junk. Sounded like her aluminum bat, from the way it hit her foot with a hollow echo. "Shit, one sec, cleaning up."

Styx flipped a light on and started to move her crap around, setting enough aside for them both to sit comfortably. Her aluminum bat, her golf club, a short length of barbwire, kendo stick - broken, needed a new one - as well as a spare tire that came with the van. There were also a few discarded food wrappers here and there, making it look exactly like the sort of place people expected her to be.

When things were clean enough, she motioned for Abattoir to follow. "Okay, come on in." She said, as if it was the most normal setup in the world."Close it behind you." Styx sat in the far end and reached over the seat, grabbing a few bottles and needles from the armrest compartment - painkillers. What every growing hardcore wrestler needs.

She sat cross-legged and started laying them out, side by side, one by one."Lidocaine, morphine, oxycodone, pethidine, flupirtine. Needles are new and clean." If they were going to palaver, it would help if they weren't both dealing with intense amounts of pain as they spoke. On top of that, she wanted to see if she could get Abattoir take the mask off.

As a show of good faith, Styx calmly took an oxycodone and gulped it down, then closed her eyes and sighed as the effect began to kick in. Pleasant. Numbing. Her head still ached, but it was passing.

She wiped the blood stream off her nose and sat forward, waiting to see what her new playmate would do.

Well, there was something to be said for knowing the arena well enough to have a quick exit. This also meant Styx had a significant upper hand if she wanted to get Abattoir lost or otherwise lead her into a trap - a suspicion greatly reinforced when she arrived in the parking lot and discovered that Styx's ride was a paneled child molester van - but to her credit, the brawler never led her astray. At least for the moment, their little cease-fire was genuine.

As Styx rummaged around in the back of the van, Abattoir glanced around the lot, trying to intuit her position from what little she'd seen. The many twists and turns she'd just hurriedly limped through meant her sense of direction was totally out of whack, but thankfully the lot on this side of the arena was fairly distinct - it wasn't the one she'd parked in, which meant her hog was all the way on the other side. Well, that'd be a hell of a walk once they got done hiding out from any pursuing security.

Eventually, though, her erstwhile rival returned and hurried her into the back of the van. Closing the door behind her, she backed up against a wall and slid to the floor. It was nice to relax for a moment, all things considered; she leaned her head back and focused on steadying her breathing as Styx pulled out an assortment of narcotics. Well, that was daring. The Japanese had an absurdly strict policy on illegal drug use, one that somehow managed to be even stricter on foreigners. Abattoir, as a person who had to deal with chronic pain and wasn't quite flush enough to get this kind of thing regularly prescribed, typically settled for copious amounts of (totally legal) alcohol in order to avoid any serious run-ins with the law.

Still, if Styx was offering, she was accepting, no questions asked. Withdrawing a syringe, the nak muay filled it with a few CCs of morphine sulfate, tapped out an air bubble, and promptly jammed it into her thigh. The skirt, thankfully, allowed easier access for that kind of thing. She set the needle to one side, relaxed for a moment and waited for the effects - which thankfully came much faster intravenously - and then let out a slow, measured breath. The rush of combat was dying down, and the world around Abattoir was starting to come into a little more focus, which, if nothing else, let her notice Styx's expectant look.

...Ah. Right, this was one of the drawbacks about wearing the mask: it made taking the thing off into an act of theater.

As the opioids relaxed her system and slowed her breathing down, Abattoir reached behind her head and unfastened the catches on the back of the mask. She gently peeled the apparatus from her face and set it down next to her, then shook out her hair. The revelation was...actually rather normal. Her mouth was all bloodied up from taking some shots in the fight, and there was a large surgical scar running down one side of her chin, but by no means was she terrifyingly disfigured. That was actually kind of disappointing, her (now very relaxed) brain concluded. Maybe she should get around to maiming herself someday.

"Well?"

The mask didn't do her many favors when it came to being intelligible, but as it turned out, her voice was a gravelly mess with or without it.

Sherlock Holmes, River Styx was not, but that didn't mean she couldn't make some reasonable deductions from time to time, and she'd pegged Abattoir as someone who wasn't wholly unfamiliar with under-the-counter medication. It was a common thing, really, and most of the underground brawler she'd known took at least some hits every now and then. Dealing with pain in a fight was one thing, but even the best had to go to sleep at some point, and trying to drift off while your body ached was an amazingly unpleasant experience.

Her theory was confirmed when Abattoir took the needle without a second of hesitation and jabbed it deep into her skin. Not a shriek, not a whimper, not even so much as a furrowed eyebrow. This was something she'd done often, obviously, enough that it was routine. Not that it mattered, but it was nice to know how close to the same place they were coming from.

But now came the interesting part. Styx laid back and watched as Abattoir began to remove the mask, taking her time for the dramatic reveal...or, that might've been the drugs kicking in. Either way, her mind ran wild as she considered the possibilities. Maybe her jaw was unhinged, and the apparatus held it in. Maybe her teeth and tongue were a mangled, gnarled mess thanks to a botched surgery. Interesting thoughts, and her eyes widened as the mask was removed to reveal...nothing. Just a normal girl, more or less. Styx wouldn't have given her a second look if they passed in the street. That was disappointingly mundane.

She glanced over to the side with a slight cough. "Huh." That was all she had to say about it, as Styx leaned forward and drummed her fingers on the floor. Abattoir was still new here, and in order for her to get the full picture of what Styx was about to offer, she'd have to explain a few things.

"Here's the gist." She reached over to the side and grabbed a flyer from the pile, advertising the most recent Avalanche show. A bunch of the girls were on it, most of them sexed up with their chests jutting out. "The AFW is weak. The fans don't want competition. They don't want brutal, raw matches. They want sex. Cheap, easy sex matches, where talentless sluts fuck in the ring. The management hardly gives a shit about hardcore matches, and the hardcore division is, basically, just an empty shelll. Right now, I am the hardcore division. I'm not bragging or anything, it's just a statement of fact. There are some girls here who think they're hardcore, but they're not. They think a hardcore match is just a silly gimmick, nothing to take seriously. They don't see the art. They don't have the carnage. These motherfuckers had a casket match with a goddamn pokeball. The tag team champs are two idiots in bunny outfits. The hentai champ is a whiny blue-haired rich bitch. Even the world champ spends more time shrieking her head off than wrestling, and she couldn't even get the title without management playing favorites." She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, forcing herself to calm down. Which was quite easy. Hooray drugs. "It's a joke."

She crumbled the flyer up and threw it back with the other trash. "But there is potential. The AFW is like a No-Go Zone with an unlimited cash flow. Imagine the matches we had, only with an actual budget.That's what I want. So," She threw up her hands and sat back. "My plan is simple. Get the title. Get matches. Beat the shit out of the weak little chucklefucks they have here. Force them out. Make them bring in new talent. Wrestlers like us, wrestlers who actually want to get bloody in the ring. Push away the pussy fans who just come to watch bad porn, attract the hardcore fans who want to see some real gore. Basically, when I'm done, Friction is going to be a warzone. Friction burns, and out of the ashes comes something awesome."

She sighed as another wave of euphoria hit, and a lax smile spread across her face. "It'll be glorious."

So.  Here they were, at the crux of things.  Abattoir sat back, letting Styx's words wash over her amid the narcotic haze, and her mind wandered as the other woman's explanation percolated inside it.  Her head was lolled back, her eyes closed for the moment, as if she were sleeping.  She didn't offer as much as an intermittent "mm?", but then, Styx was a big girl, she'd probably take it on faith that none of this was falling on deaf ears.

Idly, as she considered the brawler's analysis of the AFW roster, the tip of her tongue poked out between her lips and did a quick swish back and forth, feeling their texture, studying the bitter metallic taste on them.  It was forked; she'd had the end of it split a year ago on a whim.

Now, the matter at hand.  It was...complicated.  Minus a few small divergent views (and one very big one, but more on that later), Abattoir's goal more or less ran alongside Styx's.  Was that worth allying?  She hated Styx, after all (Abattoir hated everybody, no exceptions, but the nature of their last encounter had made this particularly personal), had a pronounced distaste for doing the whole team-up thing, and perhaps most important of all, her endgame veered sharply away from Styx's, right at the end.  Burning everything to ashes sounded excellent.  Something rising from those ashes afterwards, less so.

"I had a dream once," she abruptly drawled, the morphine loosening her lips (and adding a very slight slur to her consonants).  "I dreamed I was on a cliff looking down at the whole world, and they--I don't know how I knew, but they were all dead.  Everyone.  Everywhere.  I'd killed them."  She did actually know how - the dream had prominently featured a bloody sword in her hands - but that was dumb fairy tale bullshit and it'd detract from the overall message here.  "And I sat down on the cliff, and I looked out at all of them, and I smiled, and I waited."  Her lips twitched again, pressing together for a moment.  "I cried when I woke up."

A cryptic ending, and not one she elaborated on out loud.  It'd been a moment of profound happiness, something Abattoir's ravaged mind couldn't recall having ever experienced, and in truth she hadn't known how to process it.

Her eyes snapped open, finding Styx's almost automatically.  "I think we might disagree about the very end of your plan," she continued.  A thoughtful pause followed while she milled the idea around some more, then something vaguely resembling a smile (considering her mouth was usually so tightly drawn it looked like a knife wound, this was a generous label to give it).  "But then...maybe we can wait to fight about it until we get to that part.  Mm?"

Goddamn. Styx had no intention of ever ending up on some therapist's cushy couch and she sincerely doubted Abattoir was any different. But in the unlikely event that ever happened, whoever was doing the honors would get a fucking thick book out them. Quite possibly a trilogy.

Styx's head slowly cocked to the side as Abattoir spoke about her dream. She was fairly certain a lot of what she said was just drug-induced bullshit. She couldn't talk, though, because most of what she herself had just said was drug induced bullshit, too. The weirdness of this conversation didn't detract from the salient points being made.  They both agreed on the major areas. They were heading down the same path, and while that path split near the end, it would be a long time till that came. Until then, there was no reason not to help each other along the way. No reason that was good enough, anyway.

"So we're-" Styx squinted when she saw the forked tongue, just to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks. Nice. She'd though about getting that once, thought she'd look silly. Abattoir made it work. "Nice tongue. So we're on the same page, just not in the same paragraph. I can work with that." She curled her knees up to her chest and laid her arms over them, all while she swished around to get better seating."If things don't work like I'm planning, I'm fine with the places burning up, anyway. It either works the way it's supposed to or it doesn't work at all. I'll take a flamethrower to the place before I let another Pool of Hentai match go down." Styx started to pause, then quickly added on with a raised hand. "Don't. Ask."

She checked her nails idly, as if she'd ever bothered to get them done even once in her life, and then focused back on Abattoir to see that smile. Her own smile mirrored it perfectly, and the scene between them was somehow warmingly friendly, yet disastrously dangerous at the same time. Styx loved the combination.

"And we are going to fight again. That is a thing that is going to happen, no matter how this goes." She moved forward and walked on her knees, getting nearer and nearer to Abattoir like a hungry lioness closing in on her next meal. Only she wasn't hungry enough to eat. Yet. "I beat the shit out of you, you want to beat the shit out of me. I respect that. Won't happen, but I respect it. We don't have to be best buds. We have similar goals, think about the same way, so we can work together to get what we want. And when we're doing working together, we can go somewhere nice and quiet and kill each other.

Her face came close to Abattoir's, only a foot or so away, as the haze started to come over them both. Styx stared at her with half-lidded eyes and licked her lips. "Sound good?"