Come Together

It was getting late at the apartment of River Styx. Nearing midnight in a section of the city that most people didn’t come through unless they were trying to get somewhere else. More rundown, more slummish, darker and grittier with a lot more edge. It suited her well.

Usually she wasn’t in her apartment around this time of night, typically finding better things to do with her time. Fights to get into, mosh pits to attend, bottles in desperate need of being emptied. Tonight, though, she was home. Tonight, she actually had stuff to do. Tonight, she’d have company.

Her apartment was spartan all the way, with only the bare basics at best. Fridge, kitchenette, couch, TV. She’d made some decent money during her quest for the hardcore belt, but now that was over. No more hardcore matches for her, at least as long as Adrian had the belt. She had to bring in some new income to keep her little slice of heaven running. She had to find some way to occupy her time. She needed a new direction. A new goal.

So here Styx sat, in the middle of her apartment, with a round table in the center that wasn't usually. Waiting for her 'friends' to arrive, her invited guests, so they could talk about what to do with the new year.

Styx had ideas. She was eager to share them.

Jessica checked her phone. It seemed so odd. River Styx, one of her best friends, wanted to talk. Not get drunk, not fight anyone, not commit felonies. Just talk. It was perhaps not such a good idea to check her phone in the middle of traffic but Jessica never really minded all the honking that was usually aimed at her. She waited for the light to turn yellow and drove a little closer to her destination.

She looked around. Jessica didn't live in a good part of the city but it stretched the imagination to think of a worse part. The Violent Violet should have gotten the extra anti-theft shit when she bought the car even if the car salesman was skeevy as hell. She would surely be filing some insurance claim after tonight. Whatever. She didn't want to worry about that. That was a worry for tomorrow and Jessica was preoccupied with something else. A new year had turned, and Jessica fully intended to make this year count more than any other.

The Violent Violet found the address and found reasonable parking. As she walked, she winced from time to time. She hadn't quite gotten over her match with Abattoir yet and the wounds were still fairly fresh. There were a few nice scars forming and Jessica looked impressive in her leather jacket. Japan wasn't quite as cold as Iowa but she had a scarf around her neck and a beanie on. Her skintight jeans showed off the nice legs that were pounding the pavement towards the door.

She knocked twice and then walked in. "Hey."

Styx, who was sitting at the table, looked up from the bottle she’d be idly spinning around and nodded Jessica’s way with a little smile. One of the rare genuine smiles she reserved for certain people. ”Hey, babe.” She looked her favorite Iowan over, head to toe. ”You look like shit.”

With anyone else that would’ve just been a simple observation, but here Styx was ribbing Jessica a bit. There were precious few people in the world whose company she actually enjoyed for any real length of time, and this purple-haired wrestling beast was one of them.

”Come on in, take a seat.” She nodded to a chair off to the side. ”Got a frie-” Styx caught herself at the last moment And clicked her teeth. “Got someone else coming, when she gets here we can start talking.”

Jessica lent Styx's nod back to her and took a seat, as was requested of her. While she didn't look like shit, she wasn't looking as drop dead gorgeous as she usually did. It didn't matter though, the little smile was a compliment enough. There was a weird pause before she said whatever word she was about to say, but Jessica didn't put much stock in it.

"And you look, uh, disgustingly normal." Jessica gave Styx a good look see in return and liked what she saw. The end of the year had been kind of hard for Styx and Jessica was well aware of that. So she thought she would dish some banter back to cheer her up. "Didn't bring any alcohol. Figured we should talk before we get drunk. We can go on a beer run later."

She leaned back in her chair and rested her hands behind her head. Jessica wasn't facing the door but she was nonetheless curious as to who would walk through it. There were only so many people in the world who could both attract River and not be annihilated by her. Whoever it was, they were sure to be very, shall we say, interesting.

There was a nice, relaxing ten minutes or so of waiting, and then the door creaked half-open like something out of a horror movie and a familiar pair of eyes peered out from behind it.

"There's a dead guy out on the first floor landing."

Abattoir's rasp was a little more gravelly than usual, and the telltale bluish-gray hints of a fading bruise lingered between her eyes where Jessica had punched her in their festive holiday match.  It was hard to make out the remains of any further damage, though, apart from a few stitched areas on her legs, because above the skirt she was wearing a gray hoodie adorned with a cabalistic cross down the back (complete with ATEH MALKUTH etc. labels).  With the long sleeves and her hood pulled up, she looked more or less intact - although chances were very good she was anything but, even having had some recovery time.

"I think he ODed," Abattoir continued in a vaguely dreamlike tone, staring behind Styx's head at the wall.  "Because he had a thing tied around one arm, I mean, and his pupils were tiny and twitching like angels dancing on the head of a pin.  I didn't see any needles, though, so maybe he got drunk and froze to death.  He was kind of scruffy.  I don't think he'll be missed."

There was a long silence.  She didn't actually come in so much as she hovered by the door, head sticking through it like a malevolent balloon.

Styx and Jessica had started up a little poker game to pass the time, but Styx took a break from it when she heard her door slowly creaking open, not exactly sure who or what to expect - Japan had a lower concentrations of psychos than just about anywhere else in the world, but it still had them, and she had the sneaking suspicion that more than a few lived in her building. Fortunately, this wasn’t any craziness she wasn’t used to, as an unmistakable voice confirmed.

”Jesus fuck." It was Abattoir. Of course it was Abattoir. Having picked up a wealth of experiences despite her young age, there were only a small handful of things in the world that could really disturb River Styx. Abattoir was starting to work her way on that list, especially now that she seemed to be in the middle of a weird revenant phase. "You could knock. It wouldn't kill you.” She rubbed her forehead, running a few faces through her brain before she figured out who Abattoir was talking about. She didn’t know him by name, but she’d seen him hanging around the bottom floor enough, doing this or that or smoking something illegal all by his lonesome. She'd bought a few things of him a couple of times, but that was the extent of their relationship.

Kind of sad. Shit happens.

”Probably won’t be, no.” Styx leaned her chair to the side, just enough for her to peek down the foyer and see Abattoir still standing there, doing her creepy thing. Just standing there. ”What, do you think it’s a trap or something? Come on in, everything’s fine, we’re all friends here.” She glanced back at Jessica with a knowing slip of a smile.

She probably should've knocked, yeah. Abattoir pondered this for a moment and then made a mental note to do that next time.

"Okay." She glided in, letting the door swing shut behind her, and perched unblinkingly on one of the chairs. In the back of her head, she wondered about Dead Landing Guy, and if it was true that human meat tasted kind of like pork. Maybe if Styx had a saw lying around, and would let her use her shower...

Wait, no. That was a terrible idea. There had been that thing on the news that said if you ate a person's brain you could get...prius? Premiums? Something like that. Prions, that was it. They got into your central nervous system and changed all the proteins to be like themselves and they were neither alive nor dead and couldn't be destroyed by any known means, and the only thing that ever waited in their future was a slow death where you forgot what was happening to you by the end.

Stifling the realization that she was beginning to feel a closer kinship to prions than any human being, Abattoir glanced from Jessica to Styx and back again. "Sup?" Hopefully this wasn't just a social call. She was the last person anyone ever wanted to invite to poker night. (If nothing else, because the mask gave her an unfair advantage.)

Jessica was down. By a lot. One of the tricky parts about playing poker was that you had to hide your emotions. That was something that Jessica usually failed spectacularly at, especially when it came to rage. Just as River seemed to be collecting even more of her hard earned money, there was a knock at the door. River did not strike Jessica as a social butterfly, and Jessica thought she was kidding when she said someone else would be coming. There was some mindless chatter about some dead guy, then Jessica was acknowledged.

She turned. Jessica must have eaten something awfully funny that day because her eyes were surely deceiving her. No way. No fucking way. The Violent Violet thought she had put all that shit about Christmas and Avalanche behind her. And then there was this revenent of all of her failures, risen from the grave like in a bad zombie flick. What was this, some sort of set up? Jessica thought she could trust River. Had she really aided this masked bitch in getting revenge? But she wasn't attacking. She wasn't hitting her with anything.

Jessica rubbed her eyes. No, it really was her. Tonight was about to get really interesting. "Hey. Recognize me from anywhere?" Jessica threw the first barb. There would be quite a few more to come.

This was already going far better than Styx had thought it would. Given how prone to violence Jessica was and how prone Abattoir was to being whatever the hell she was, she figured there was a 50/50 chance that they would just start brawling on the spot. Amusing as that would be to watch - again - it would sort of put a damper on what she hoped to accomplish here.

”Okay, you two’ve already met, so re-introductions.” Styx started to pocket her ill-gotten gains with one hand while she motioned between the two of them with. Her voice was as calm and taciturn as it could ever possibly be, which meant that it only sounded a little like she wanted to assualt everyone in the room.

”Abs, this is Jessica. We met in a bar, and now we do various illegal things together. Jessica, this is Abattoir. I beat her up a long time ago, and now she’s sort of…” Styx stared up at the ceiling for a moment, like the answer was written up there, then just gave up. ”It’s complicated. But she’s straight with me. And you’re straight with me. So we should all be straight together.” Styx brought her hands togehter for a loud clap. “And my social circle is complete.”

Styx pushed a third chair at the table with her foot, giving Abattoir some space to sit down. ”Just give me a minute to throw an idea at you both. You guys don’t like it, we can spend the night beating the shit out of each other. Either way, it’s a fun time.”

Oh. Christmas girl. Abattoir didn't actually know her name; they hadn't really gotten around to introductions before the carnage had started. Still, a solid question. "Oh," she answered. "Yeah. That was fun." It was a truthful answer; that'd probably been the most enjoyable match she'd had since arriving in AFW.

Introductions commenced. Styx seemed at a loss to describe their relationship - Abattoir noticeably followed her gaze up to the ceiling, apparently thinking there might be something there - and the nak muay was going to chime in with a helpful description of herself when Styx gave up altogether and just plowed ahead, which...all things considered, was probably the wisest possible move. Although spending the night beating the shit out of each other sounded like a worthwhile use of her time, she supposed listening to the proposition was the polite thing to do in this case. Well, so be it.

Abattoir leaned back against the chair, red eyes roaming around between the hood and the mask. "Mm?"

She was listening, evidently.