Come into my Parlour...

Dmitri couldn’t see it, but Alicia was frowning.

It might have been because, though her legs outmatched his arm considerably, her arms did not. It might have been because he was flexible enough to shake off the worst of it. It might have been because she wasn’t applying the hold properly and it wasn’t having the desired effect.

Alicia didn’t know. What she did know is that it wasn’t having the desired effect. And that did irk her, but not to the point of sitting there wasting her time with a hold that wasn’t going to work as intended. By the time she released it, she’d probably made some decent headway in softening up his arm but that was about it.

Although released was… maybe a little strong. Certainly she let him go, letting him flop flat on his face as his arms and shoulders probably groaned with relief. But that was a little premature: she was only transitioning from one hold to another, not letting him go entirely. With Dmitri flat on his face, Alicia moved purposefully to sit on his back. Pretty much as if she was going for that old staple of wrestling – the Camel Clutch.

And it had sort of crossed her mind, but any Camel Clutch she applied would be heavily leant towards the amateur end of the spectrum. Like most wrestling submission moves, Alicia hadn’t ever used one before and her personal experience of the hold might be on the positive side of the spectrum but only just.

So no, she didn’t intend to try a Camel Clutch. Instead, she brought one leg up and around, trapping his arm on the inside as her foot pressed against the opposite side of his face. And then she repeated the process, her ankles crossed at the base of his neck with both arms locked between the shape described by her long legs.

And then she started to squeeze them together, as if she was scissoring his arms – pressing his shoulders together again but this time with all the power of those big, solid, deadly thighs providing the driving force. This was a Lotus Lock, effectively another scissors variant turned joint lock. Usually, she’d seen it applied with the opponent sitting up but… well, this seemed to work just as well.

Dmitri couldn’t see it, but he got the distinct impression that Alicia was frowning.

Call it a hunch. Going by present evidence, he certainly wasn’t the best judge of character, especially when it came to the redheaded Scissor Queen. But after spending this much time in her clutches, he was beginning to get a feel for the way Alicia - the real Alicia - thought, what made her happy and what didn’t. She seemed to be most content when her moves were dishing out damage, when they were being effective.

This move, while not happy-happy fun time in the least, wasn’t all that painful. Compared to the other ordeals he’d suffered, it was downright pleasant. Not enough to make him scream. Groans aplenty, but no screams.

So it was no surprise when she let it go. Sort of.

Alicia sat on his back and reached forward, going for what he assumed was a Camel Clutch. It was a little surprising for her, since she clearly seemed to prefer moves that wrapped him up between her thunderous thighs, but then again, the move was incredibly common among Friciton wrestlers. It would certainly hurt enough to meet her high standards.

The dismay set in, however, when her legs began to wind their way around his arms. One, then the other. The tighting began. The pulling. The squeezing. Suddenly, his flexibility mattered nothing at all - the pain was coming.

Dmitri buried his face into the mat and screamed for what had to be at least the tenth time today, his shriek rumbling through the floor. There were no spasms this time, but only because her weight prevented. His body would jerk and bounce, but do little else. She wasn’t coming unseated. She wasn’t moving.

As the coils grew tighter and tigher, the same desperation that had driven him to attack her toes before came back. His common sense warned him, told him it wasn’t the best idea to go down that path, but the only good thing about this was that his private area was protected in this hold - she couldn’t stomp it into the ground from this position. She’d have to let go if she wanted to do that, which would at least save her shoulders from getting pulled out of their joints.

He did the math. It made sense.

Turning his head to the side as much as he could, Dmitri opened his mouth and tried to do the only thing he could do in this position: bite her foot.

That was more like it.

This time, Alicia could feel things shifting. He might be flexible, impressively so, but he wasn’t that flexible. This time, she’d got him.

She felt Dmitri turn his head but thought nothing of it, really. Her mistake.

The kickboxer’s feet were angled outwards, pointing away from both of them. Her toes were curled in tightly as Alicia focused her attention on compressing his arms inwards. All of which meant that Dmitri’s attempt to bite was more or less doomed to failure – the wrappings around it and the way her foot was positioned just meant he couldn’t exactly sink his teeth in.

Caught entirely by surprise, it was still Alicia’s turn to inhale sharply and that only because he hadn’t really managed to do any damage. Instinctively she pulled back, yanking her feet out of range and effectively breaking the hold – although the damage had almost certainly been done. With the initial flare of panic over, though, anger immediately replaced it.

Biting. He’d tried to bite her. He’d thought biting her would work.

She wasn’t honestly sure which was more insulting.

Either way, he was about to regret it.

Alicia, still sat atop his back, grabbed at his shoulders and went to roll them both over, her legs snaking around his lower ribs and tightening instantly as though she meant to flatten him between her thighs. The big redhead planted both hands on the mats and arched up, thrusting her hips into the hold, her body off the ground as she threw her head back. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her lips peeled back in a sneer of effort as she – for the first time – simply concentrated on making Dmitri hurt as much as possible.

She wouldn’t break anything, she had that much control left, but she intended to take him straight to the very limits of what his body could take.

Biting. Really.

Dmitri could admit that, yes, on paper, biting the foot of woman who could literally break him in two between her thighs - and seemed to enjoy coming close - was not a smart move. Some might call it ‘suicidal’.

His logic was that he'd reached a point where there wasn't much worse she could do to him. Alicia was on the verge of dislocating both of his shoulders simultaneously, a feat he wouldn't have thought possible. She'd already broken his body to the point where he was a living rag doll. This was it. This was the edge. Maybe it would tick her off and make her go to another hold, but screw it, he'd treasure even a few second where she was crushing him.

Silly, silly thoughts. Should've known. No matter how bad it gets, pain can always be worse.

To his credit, his ‘plan’ worked. Alicia did ease up, for a couple of precious moments. His shoulders were free of the torment, but when she pulled him over and he had the familiar sensation of sinuous thighs wrapping around his ribs, he knew he’d made a bad choice. He had about one second to think about his mistake, then coherent thought became all but impossible.

Dmitri didn't scream. Not out of defiance or because he wanted to show how tough he waa. That wouldn't make his life easier, as his current situation aptly proved.

No, he didn't scream because he simply couldn't. He didn't have the breath for it. All that came out was this hoarse little whine, a hollow, empty dry sort of cry.

He hung there in Alicia’s grasp, arms and legs dangling limply, looking for all the world like a puppet with cut strings. There was the occasional twitched, a little jump here and there, but aside from that, his body couldn’t do much more than arch backwards as his wide, fearful eyes looked at Alicia upside down.

If Dmitri had tried to bite her foot, Alicia’s thighs were now returning the favour. In a sense, anyway, because hers were too big to ‘slice’ into a body in the same way as leaner, more sinewy legs could manage. Instead, his ribcage might as well have been stuck between two, thick planks of living steel, doing their best to press together – and, as his ribcage was in the way, well… You do the maths. Bones groaned. Organs shifted closer together. Breathing got a lot harder. And with the liver and kidneys thereabouts as well… This was not a good spot to be with a very angry Alicia Wells bearing down on you.

She wasn’t even bothering trapping his arms at this point. One of her arms was around his throat now, not choking but just pulling him back against her chest. Her chin rested on his shoulder. He could probably feel her heart beating, they were that close. She could certainly feel his beating desperately as she kept the pressure up.

So it was probably fortunate for the ‘human calculator’ that the scissor specialist had an innate understanding of how far she could turn that vice before stuff started to go snap, crackle and pop. When she pulled her thighs away suddenly, it was without doing any damage beyond possibly some micro-fractures in the ribs.

Suffice to say, he ought to stay clear of any bear hugs for a while.

Pulling back, Alicia slammed him back down, mounted him and mercilessly dropped down on his ribs.

The kickboxer was… Let’s call it “glute dominant”. She had wide hips and a full, curvy butt that looked great in shorts, packed as it was with the muscle that powered her lethal scissors and kicks in company with her quads and hamstrings.

Undoubtedly, it would feel less great having it dropped on already beaten ribs from a couple of feet up.

Then it was back to the schoolgirl pin, Alicia’s arms folded under her breasts as she stared down at him again.

She felt he’d been made to regret that suitably now. So… what next?

Dmitri wasn’t going to die from all of this. As much as it hurt, as bitter an agony as it was, he wasn’t near the point of return. It just felt that way.

Alicia pumped and squeezed and crushed in his organs together, making him aware of the inner workings of his body in an intimately disturbing way. Memories flashed before his eyes along with the bright spots of light, recalling his human anatomy class from the second semester. He’d done well, could identify most of the organs on sight. Liver, spleen, kidney, small intestine - he’d pass the test if he had to take it today.

That same knowledge made him able to visualize what was going on his upper body as Alicia wore it down with her brutal scissors. The mashing, the sliding, the painful slushing as his body tried to keep everything its proper order.

He wished he didn’t know all of that, now. Knowing made it worse.

There was the heart, too. Her heart. Beating against his back, a war drum for a warrioress. Boom. Boom. Boom. So steady, unlike the staccato of his own. It was a reminder that, for all the damage she’d done, it hadn’t drained her much at all. She could go so much longer.

He punishment was cut mercifully short, but it was a small blessing. He was thrown to the floor, gasping and coughing and wheezing away, and he might’ve done that for a while…

Alicia put a stop to it. The same curves he’d been admiring on the street now came down hard on his chest, hammering him with her solid weight behind them. His body jackknifed and his mouth flew open, as all his air was pushed out in one, painful instant. Dmitri's ribs relived the torture they’d just gone through, and then it was right on his back again.

Helpless. Hapless. He laid on the floor, head rolling from side to side, as she perched on his chest. Or her chest, really. He was starting to feel like she’d claimed his body, taken it for her own, and it was a sentiment he doubted Alicia would disagree with.

Dmitri tried to control his breathing and waited, looking up at her with mounting fear. He knew that look - his tormentress was thinking. He was thinking, too, but on something likely different. He was more curious about that noise he heard - was that a doorbell?

He was done.

While she wasn’t an anatomist by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, Alicia did have plenty of experience of fighting to draw upon, a natural grasp of scissorholds and what she could do with them and she’d been in this position before. Anything more would definitely be hurting him for the sake of hurting him and…

Not her style. Even if he’d doubtless disagree, nothing she’d done to him so far had been about sadism or at least not purely about sadism. It was just a question of how she tied up the loose ends. She’d got to both his arms, both his legs, his neck, his body all over…

It was like Alicia had forgotten there was a world beyond the closed room, with the mats on the floor and the tang of sweat in the stale air. The sound of the doorbell jolted her sharply out of that, reminding her that – yes – there was a world beyond and her head snapped around to stare at the door. Pointlessly, because that door just led back to her living room but it was instinct. Equally instinctively, she sat completely still, listening. Just listening. If she sat still, if there wasn’t any sign that anyone was home, maybe they’d go away.

It was a futile hope at the best of times and it was proven as such only seconds later when the damn thing rang again. This time, to Alicia’s ear at least, it was accompanied by the faintest hint of a voice calling out.

Alicia closed her eyes and sighed. A glance at Dmitri, the wheezing wreck she’d made of the martial artist at least, told her that he probably wasn’t going to be making a break for anything in the next few days. And he’d already proven that shouting wasn’t within his capabilities any more either. Fine.

”I’ll be right back,” She told him, absently, before she shoved herself to her feet in one powerful motion and went to the door out into the living room, pulling it open. She was just having a workout, nothing else. That was all. And then it was clearly time to send Dmitri on his way. Biting aside, he’d been a good sparring partner. And he’d equally clearly had enough.

Mother of God, that was a doorbell.

Dmitri wasn’t much of a religious person, despite being raised Catholic. There was no one reason for him waning, he’d sort of grown out of it as he aged and matured, figuring it was best to look at the world with a naturalistic. But that heavenly sound, the confirmation of the existence of another human being, gave him the first twinge of real hope he’d had since this nightmare began. He could see it as a miracle.

Then again, if God was going to intervene, Dmitri would’ve preferred he do it before Alicia tore him to shreds and mangled his innards. But God works in mysterious ways, our ways are not His ways, on and on…

For a second, he thought Alicia might ignore it and just move on, but thankfully, she decided to go ahead and answer. This was it. This was his only chance.

”Hey there, big girl!” The door opened to reveal Mitsuru Kaneda, Alicia’s neighbor below and fellow wrestler. Not big in the company, just a new face who’d joined not long before Alicia herself. Blue hair, short, kind of a squeaky voice. Seemed to think constantly joking about Alicia’s height was funny, for some reason. ”I was chilling downstairs, thought I heard someone yelling and banging around up here. You okay?”

Okay, so, Dmitri couldn’t move much. That was problem one.

He couldn’t talk much. That was problem two.

But he could do a little of both, and maybe that would be enough to just tell his potential savior that something was clearly not right here. Dmitri began to bang his head on the mat, hitting it with all the power he could muster and ignoring the pain he was causing himself - perspective was a lovely thing. He also screamed at the top of his lungs, which amounted to nothing more than a raspy whisper at the moment.

"Help. Help."

But it was something. It could be enough. He had to believe it could be enough.

As she exited the small room where they’d been wrestling, it occurred to Alicia to close the door behind her just in case. But, after a moment’s thought, she decided not to bother. The apartment was arranged such that whoever it was wouldn’t be able to see in there from the main door anyway and she wanted to be able to keep an ear pricked in case Dmitri did anything he was going to regret later. What, she couldn’t imagine, but she’d rather be able to see and hear just in case.

Otherwise, she strode straight across to the door and opened it without a pause, grateful she’d thought to have Dmitri change in there. There was nothing in sight that suggested she’d had guests, nothing to rouse suspicion. All she needed to do was keep her story (and her face) straight and she’d be fine. One thing she had found was that most Japanese were polite enough to take excuses at face value so long as they were vaguely plausible.

Or, at least, that was true of the AFW personnel she’d met in this block, probably because they heard far stranger things than Alicia working out which had been the truth before. So, really, it hadn’t been excuses up to this point.

Undoing the lock, she swung her door open to reveal a familiar face crowned by a mop of blue hair. Mitsuru, it figured. The other newcomer wasn’t someone Alicia disliked, height jokes or not; they’d chiefly bonded over both being new and while the height jokes got old, it was nice to have a friend, weird or not. It helped that they’d never, ever be expected to fight each other because the redhead had legs almost as long as the bluenette was tall.

Ok, that was exaggerating a bit but management weren’t that stupid.

”Hey Shorty,” She threw back as had become her wont, utterly deadpan, leaning casually against the doorjamb. ”Yeah, everything’s fine. Not sure about the yelling but I was doing some working out back there; probably explains the banging.”

Well, that was one lie but the rest was true. Sort of.

Her smile tightened slightly though. Faintly at the very edge of her hearing, she could hear a banging noise coming from behind her. And what might be the attempts of a badly beaten throat, vocal chords and lungs to cry for help.

Dmitri… But from a room and a half away, there was absolutely nothing she could do except think vaguely evil thoughts about him while she chatted to Mitsuru.

”Sorry if I disturbed you,” She went on quickly, ”But I’m just about done. Did you want to watch a film later or something?”

Mitsuru thought she was a good judge of character. Being part of a rare subgroup in Japan - people with the rare blue-hair gene, or ‘blunettes’, as they liked to be called - hadn’t been the most easy thing growing up, and she’d had to get used to a lot of taunting. She learned to suss out what people really wanted from her with relative ease.

But, danged if she could get a good feel for Alicia.

The Amazon standing before her seemed nice enough, really. Since they’d met, she and Alicia both had some pleasant conversations, and even enjoyed some movie nights together. The big redhead seemed like a good enough person, all over.

Until you turned on the TV and watched her squeezing some little girl out like a tube of toothpaste. Sheeeesh.

So the verdict was still out on her, but at least they got along well enough for Mitsuru to actually care when she heard weird noises. Couldn’t say that about pretty much anyone else in the building.

Mitsuru opened her mouth to reply, then kept it open as a faint noise caught her attention. It sounded like...well, being frank, a zombie. Like there was something banging around in Alicia’s sparring. Something with a scraggly voice...or someone.

”Huh?” She shot back to attention as Alicia quickly spoke. That noise was still going, though. ”Oh, sure. We can, um, watch Gladiator, and you can tell me everything wrong about it.” She leaned to the side, trying to look past Alicia’s frame. Not the easiest thing to do. ”Hey, what’s that noise?” Her eyes narrowed. ”Is that...”