When the Music's Over

Jessica awoke, and judging from her soft greeting, she was in a good mood. “Mmm, good morning, Jessica,” Irene cooed back, wiggling her hips against Jessica's as a show of affection. Sleeping with a lover at her side was something that Irene regretted being unable to do more often. Alas, the night was over, and the two women would need to leave this embrace if the day was to begin in earnest.

“I'll get breakfast started,” Irene offered, beginning to pull herself out of the violet's grasp to roll out of bed. She hadn't forgotten Jessica's edict that she crawl on all fours, and she would obey this command as she moved toward the kitchen. Jessica's breakfast would be prepared to yesterday's standard, but today, Irene planned to make the breakfast twice: one for Jessica, and the other for herself. Her captor had practically starved her yesterday, but today, Irene would need more than cold cereal for the day of combat that lay ahead of them.

Jessica closed her eyes again. She couldn't quite see the little scientist girl, but the sounds of four limbs against the floor as opposed to the more dignified two made her smile. She stretched all of her lengthy frame and sat up, rubbing her eyes as she did so. The Violent Violet stood up and walked, naked, to the kitchen. Irene was already there as the pleasant smell informed her, and Jessica took a seat at the table.

"What do you want to practice? We're doin' throws of course." Jessica yawned. After breakfast was going to have to brush her teeth. "Why do you wrestle at AFW? Is life at the University of Tokyo really so fucking dreary? Most girls would just get a job somewhere around here. Hell, with a body like that you could be one of those slutty waitresses and just rake in the cash." Jessica didn't really mind that Irene was making the same breakfast for herself. Standing next to her stove, Irene seemed uniquely interesting. Defiant yet willing to please when it counted. Athletic but not quite fit enough. Sexy but in a refined, lithe way.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes. A sigh escaped from her lips. Going to they gym meant that she was going to have to put clothes on.

“Throws? Maybe, but I'll be teaching you submissions while I have the chance,” Irene objected, looking over her shoulder as she finished cooking the bacon to a perfect crisp. She would move on to prepare drinks for the two of them, light coffee for herself and black tea for Jessica. “You may have been able to trump me with brute strength in our match, but you'll be going up against more people like Julia Rogers in the future. People who can outwit and outrun you, unless you can catch them, twist them, squeeze them and bend them until they're begging for mercy.” Embarrassingly, Irene found herself getting a little hot as she poured hot drinks and carried them over to the table. Back in her days as a virgin, Irene had learned to enjoy the exhilaration of a good submission hold. Even now, it was quite a turn on for her. She started thinking ahead to the impending day of exercise, but Jessica dragged her back to the present with a personal question.

“It's pretty miserable there, but not because of the work. It's the people that I do it with,” Irene said, frowning bitterly. “I'm a foreigner here, and there aren't many women studying in the field I chose. Japan hasn't done a good job of shaking off its traditional beliefs, so the people here treat me like an invader. Some of my peers at college hate me outright, and I didn't want to compound my frustrations by working a normal job.”

Irene placed a filled coffee cup on the table across from Jessica, before offering her the tea as a prelude to the nearly completed breakfast she was cooking. “I've got one friend at that college...another transfer student who can probably understand how it feels to be out of place in the world...but it's still a grind at Tokyo U. I need some catharsis in my life. Wrestling for Friction and Tension threw me into a world of violence and sex, the oldest stress relievers in human history.”

Jessica rolled her eyes at Irene's comments. All the little techies thought they were so damn clever at the thousand submissions they knew. Before you get a girl all wrapped up you got to get her down for a while. And even if you had her down, you needed a lot of power to truly make it hurt. Jessica knew her fair share of submissions but it wasn't a point of pride for her. It was so damn boring to grind a girl out on the ground anyways. Much more entertaining and fun to throw them around.

But Jessica was slow. She had to grant Irene that. "Outrun me, fine. Outwit me, no. I have been around the block way too many times to not see things coming. Wrestling is in my blood, coursing through my veins. You can move quicker, but you won't ever think quicker." Jessica had been in Japan for a while but still almost never drank tea. It was too weak. Nice black coffee though, that was the drink for her. It was dark as midnight and bitter as hell. Just the way she liked it.

The Violent Violet did empathize with Irene on the foreigner thing. She never really felt the need to have a wide circle of friends, but she did have a few people she hung out with. The face of River floated through her imagination. She took another sip of coffee. "Fuck normal jobs," she said as if that had any meaning to anyone other than her.

When Jessica went on a rant about how great a wrestler she was, Irene cringed. Jessica's attitude toward herself was pretty troubling. She really believed that she had no equal on Earth, so no wonder she'd reacted so violently when Avery shattered that delusion. The diminutive wrestler shook her head as she arranged bacon and scrambled eggs on two plates, not forgetting to add some hot sauce to Jessica's. She would walk back to the table and set Jessica's breakfast down, as well as her own, before sitting down. Then she did something risky...

“You're a great wrestler, Jessica, but you should really accept some humility into your life. You pour so much pride into this sport that every loss you face in the ring is unbearable to you. It's not healthy.”

Yes, Irene was definitely lecturing Jessica about her life choices...again. Every word was spoken with genuine concern, but she knew from experience that Jessica didn't appreciate it when she ran her smart mouth. Luckily, the two of them were just moments away from their day at the gym, where Jessica would have many opportunities to ragdoll her across the ring. Irene was counting on Jessica to defer the gratification of a good fight until they got there.

For a moment, Jessica took some time to reflect on who she was. She didn't intend the morning to turn into some meditative period, but that was just how it turned out. Irene was right. Every ounce of her being her whole existence was poured into wrestling. Jessica had never known any other type of life. The ring pervaded even her earliest memories and was slowly overcoming any semblance of free time she had had. At no point was she Jessica the woman, Jessica the genius or Jessica the person. She was, and always would be Jessica the wrestler. Perhaps she was walking down a dark path, and one she could not fully control. But to a woman like her, there were no other options.

"You don't know my life. The things I have seen, the things I have done." Jessica wasn't entirely sure why, but there seemed to be some genuine concern in Irene's tone. The Violent Violet met that with a tone of quiet self-doubt. The retrospect quickly faded though as she turned her attention to more pragmatic matters. She was going to be wrestling this woman, after all. Another long drain of coffee went down a treat.

"What the hell do you get out of wrestling dudes? As far as I could tell from last night, you love the ladies. Do you really like the guys as well?" Jessica smiled. While she wasn't in love with her looks, she knew she was attractive. And the way that she perched her head on her hand made her large boobs dangle and jiggle that little bit. They still had time to talk- Jessica hadn't even gotten that breakfast placed in front of her.

“I guess I can't argue with that,” Irene said, not wanting to press the issue too much. “You know yourself better than anyone else does.” With a fork in hand, Irene poked at the scrambled eggs on her plate, before starting to down them at a steady pace. She had a lingering sense of hunger from yesterday. When Jessica asked about her choice to become a mixed wrestler, she looked up at her companion, taking a moment to formulate her answer while she continued to shovel down her food. Finally, she cleared her throat and spoke.

“I'm bisexual. You may be gorgeous, but the body type you have is far less important to me than what you do with it, in the ring, and in bed.” Irene grinned happily, thinking back to a night she had spent with one of Tension's wrestlers, somewhat similar to her time with Jessica. He had been a gentleman, while Jessica had been more keen to treat Irene like a sex slave. Both of them had shown her a pretty good time, albeit in very different ways.

“I got a bit turned off of guys after the time I spent with Domino. He was my first wrestling opponent and my first crush, but he looked down on me for my promiscuous personality. He rejected me pretty quickly and started dating Julia Rogers instead,” Irene's tone of voice soured as she finished her sentence. She didn't consider herself a vindictive person by any means, but her experiences had left her with a notable lack of empathy for Domino and his new girlfriend.

You know yourself better than anyone else does. There was a pleasant verisimilitude to that and Jessica was briefly happy with that statement. Her mood quickly came crashing down when another realization came to her. She didn't really like herself that much. Not because she wasn't strong and smart and generally a badass person, but because she didn't have a belt around her waist. Because she had a nasty habit of dropping the ball when it mattered most. Because she wasn't there, not yet.

Rather than dwell on her misfortunes, Jessica turned to scarfing down her meal like it was on the verge of running away. Almost immediately afterwards, she pounded down her coffee and looked over to Irene. Normally it would have been far too early to deal with this sort of emotional bullshit, but Jessica felt a bit of a bond with this girl now. Having wrestled and fucked a girl could do that. Unfortunately, Jessica was not a wordsmith and not really the most empathetic being on the planet. "That sucks." It occurred to her that she ought to say something more and the words came out uneasily. "For the most part, you're right. What girls do in the bed and in the ring matters a whole shit ton, more than 'compatibility' or any nonsense like that. And fuck anyone who looks down on you for your promiscuous personality."

Even now, the dojo was haunting her. Julia fucking Rodgers. Whatever. Jessica tossed her plate and utensils in the approximate direction of the sink and stood up. Her body was ready for the day ahead of them. "I could never see myself wrestling a guy. It just seems...unnatural." She added, desultorily.

A warm smile crossed Irene's face, even as a loud clatter near the sink erupted where Jessica had thrown her dirty dishes. The violet's reply gave her a sense of satisfaction. It was messed up, but she had grown pretty fond of Jessica despite her temper...or perhaps because of it. Jessica was strong, independent, and unashamed of her desires. All qualities that Irene had tried to cultivate in herself, with varying degrees of success.

Irene stood up to place her dishes in the sink. She decided to clean them, so that the dishwasher could run while they were gone. “I don't do much work for the Tension division these days, but I like tangling with opponents of all shapes and sizes. Got a friend there, a man named Leon. His father is a French diplomat, and his whole family is loaded. There's no reason for him to be here, but he loves fighting and screwing as much as either of us.”

Irene went over the sink's contents with a sponge, scraping any larger chunks of refuse off of the plates and silverware before loading them into the dishwasher that sat nearby. “You met any people in Friction that you're fond of?” Irene asked, wondering if Jessica had made any friends in her quest for glory.

Jessica stretched. After big meals, Jessica usually felt like going right back to bed. Considering both of them were naked, Jessica had half a mind to drag Irene back there and make Irene do something that was not quite sleeping but thought better of it. The whole day had already been decided upon, after all, and Jessica kept her word. When it suited her, of course.

"I dunno." Jessica paused and racked her brain. "River." Memories flooded back to her. "River Styx. She is a hardcore kiddie and a damn good one. Tougher than nails and half as clever, and as loyal a friend as I have ever had." The anarchy and rawness of that woman was unmatched by any woman she had ever met, and Jessica loved that about her. "But other than that, no one really. I am sort of a lone wolf, if you hadn't already guessed." Jessica waved her hand after her last statement.

She stood up. The dishes looked like they were clean enough and Jessica was ready to start the day in earnest. "You want to do anything else? Or straight on over to the gym?" She shook her legs out a little bit. Jittery wasn't the right word for it, but Jessica was feeling a burst of energy that would surely mean a lot of pain for Irene.