Helvetica's Hotseat, Ep. 2- Alicia Wells

"There, it's on! Or- yeah, no, totally on! I mean, of course it's on! I know what I'm doing, dammit!" There was the sounds of a scrambling, scraping roughness against the speakers, but eventually the video feed came to life. And as it did so, two young women came into full view, surrounded by a rather cramped, clutter-stuffed apartment.

The first young woman, a curvy brunette with a pair of square-framed glasses nudged firmly over the bridge of her nose, looked straight into the camera. Only visible from the ribs up, seated snugly behind the desk that the camera was mounted upon, she was wearing a purple cardigan pulled tightly over a white tank top. A smirk on her face, there seemed to be clear derision in her expression, even if it wasn't aimed at anyone in the room with her. It seemed to be trained like a laser, onto whomever might be viewing this.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, once she saw the cameras were, indeed, fully on and functioning, "welcome to the second edition of Helvetica's Hotseat! I am, of course, your host- 'Student of the Game,' veteran of several matches, analyst supreme, Helvetica Lee! And tonight, I am joined by Alicia Wells! For those that don't know, Alicia is a current contender for the AFW Hardcore Championship! So, tonight, we're going to be asking her a few questions about how the hell she got there, seemingly out of nowhere, what that means to her, and who the hell she actually is!

"So, please, join me in welcoming Alicia Wells, everyone! Alicia, how are you feeling, tonight? Just coming off a hard match, and about to head into another one, bet you've got a lot to say. Why don't you tell the fans who you are, and why we should care, huh?" Helvetica leaned back, chest swelling a bit beneath her cardigan with pride, at that introduction.

Sat behind Helvetica, the second occupant of the tightly-packed room reclined in her own chair set further back behind the desk, arms folded lightly across her chest. If the brunette was curvy, this woman was just more so with a powerful edge to her physique under the plain t-shirt that covered her upper torso while baring her taut arms and a slice of her fit midriff above her jeans. She too was smirking but her eyes were dark, almost bored as the interviewer ran through the intro.

Nothing new there. She certainly hadn’t expected to be asked to do something like this but nothing the brunette was saying was news to her – or she suspected to the fans, but every interview for everything probably started this way.

”You just told them who I am,” The British amazon pointed out disdainfully, her gaze seemingly unable to decide whether to settle on the camera or the back of Helvetica’s head. ”And I don’t care if the fans care about me or not. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m here for my own reasons, not to entertain a bunch of stay-at-home know-it-alls who wouldn’t know how to throw a punch if their lives depended on it.”

Judging by the state of the apartment and the junk that filled it, she was going to guess that Helvetica – and seriously, who named their kid Helvetica? – was one of them. But she’d have said exactly the same thing either way.

”And you might want to angle that camera up a bit.”

Alicia after all had a full seven inches on ‘the Student of the Game’. Even sitting, it was anyone’s guess whether an angle that showed Helvetica’s face would show much above Alicia’s shoulders.

From beneath her glasses, Helvetica's eyes darted between the camera and her interviewee. Not the kind of response she was expecting, but not entirely unexpected. The British woman seemed perfunctory, even a little curt, but that might be something interesting. At least Helvetica wasn't sitting there with some vain glory hound, she told herself.

The camera comments, however ... "I think I've watched enough videos to know how these things go," Helvetica said, with a forced chuckle. Hurriedly, and without nearly as much subtlty as she would have hoped, Helvetica leaned over and readjusted the webcame until Alicia was well in frame.

"Okay," she said, trying to cover the sound of her last-minute alterations with her voice, "so, for those that don't know, Alicia currently stands at a pretty solid record in AFW, even with just a handful of matches under her belt. Alicia, your first official match here was a win over Gallium Heart. You want to talk about that, a little bit? What about your particular style of wrestling helped you come out with that win, and how has that affected your performance, since then?"

As she ran her mouth, Helvetica kept pushing the camera around until it was into position: squarely focused on Alicia, with the American's face edging in over the corner. Clearly a bit annoyed, Helvetica nonetheless leaned back (getting herself back into frame), and tried to put her focus back on the interview itself.

Of course she did. And that would be far more believable if not for the way she was adjusting the camera, but Alicia wasn’t going to say anything.

She just sat back and watched, listening as the bespectacled brunette went on to the next part of the interview and started at the beginning. That was a shame.

Actually, no, Alicia really didn’t want to talk about her match with Gallium Heart. There wasn’t much to say about her match with Gallium Heart, because – as Akino had neatly observed – they might as well have put her in the ring with a punching bag and let her get on with it. But she sighed, rolled her eyes and decided to make the best of it. Maybe if she got this out of the way, they’d talk about her match with Valley or Jesse.

”That match never should have happened,” She decided to say, ”I’ll grant Gallium had guts but she doesn’t have what it takes to beat me. She didn’t know how to fight a striker and she didn’t know how to fight me on the ground. So I just ran her over. There’s really not much else to say – the girl doesn’t belong in a ring. She’s got guts, I’ll grant her that, but guts don’t win fights. They just get you hurt in fights you’re never going to win.”

As far as the big redhead was concerned, it went without saying that her match with Gallium hadn’t had any effect whatsoever on her performance going forward. That was because it had barely been a match at all, as she knew, as Helvetica had to know and anyone who’d watched the ‘fight’ had to know.

Helvetica's eyes lit up, as she saw Alicia's gaze roll back in her head. The blonde amazon seemed to feel irritated at even being asked about that match- something that Helvetica knew her viewers would just eat up.

"Aw, yes," Helvetica said, nodding along with Alicia's comments about the fight, "pretty one-sided affair, there. Have to say, from a sideliner's point of view? Love that confidence. Love to see that kind of domination. Nothing is more satisfying that watching a woman that knows what she wants, just head out into the ring and take it, you know? We might come back to some of that 'doesn't belong in the ring' stuff about Gallium, because that is something I think our viewers will want to hear more about, but I want to bring things back around to you, okay?

"Now, your next matches. You had a few more 'serious' bouts of competition between that squash, and your current position as the hardcore championship contender. You want to talk about that, a little bit? Maybe drop some knowledge on us, about how one gets from point A to point B?"

Settling into position, now, Helvetica was grinning back at her interviewee. Alicia was the central focus of the camera, and any viewers eyes were going to be right on her. Helvetica crossed her fingers over her ample chest and sat back, letting her cast-bound arm rest limply over her ribs. Alicia had the floor, now, and she couldn't wait to hear what the aggressive Brit might have, to say.

‘Nothing was more satisfying’… Rubbish. Alicia rolled her eyes again at that bit of wisdom – the fans and commentators like Helvetica might think so, as might bullies, but she’d got absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever from trashing Gallium. And she certainly didn’t want the conversation going back to that match, though she seemingly wasn’t going to get a choice in the matter. Hence the brief, irritable drumming of her fingers on her bicep before she noticed and brought it to a halt.

It helped that they had moved on to a subject she was happier to talk about, although she really couldn’t shed much light on how that happened.

”By going through anyone who gets in your way, naturally,” Alicia smirked humourlessly, ”I’m only half joking, for the record. But I didn’t know I was the number one contender until Adrian Kytes told me. So, apparently, you actually need to get into a triple threat hardcore match with two of the craziest wrestlers on the roster and win.”

Her grin still had all the humour and warmth of an Ice Age glacier. Alicia had picked up on the tone Helvetica had used for ‘serious’.

”Not for the faint of heart, I think you’ll agree. I had two matches before that though. One against Jesse Rogers, which I won by knockout and one against Valley Doll which I lost by pinfall.” The redhead didn’t miss a beat as she spoke of her defeat. She could have said it was close. It had been close. But, well, a close loss was still a loss. ”But they let me demonstrate what I could do against two very different opponents and I imagine that played a part in getting me into the triple threat match as well.”

She’d be more than happy to discuss either or both those matches in more detail if asked, of course.

"Hah, didn't know that!" Helvetica shook her head, as Alicia spoke. "So, when Adrian Kytes came to tell you that you were up for that title shot, how did that go? And, because you mentioned that triple threat match, did you want to talk about that, a little bit? 'Not for the faint of heart,' indeed! Most fans couldn't even imagine being thrown into a meat grinder like your triple threat match, let alone actually coming out as a winner. That seems like a rather big deal, you want to tell us how tough a match-up that actually was?" Helvetica leaned back into her seat, rolling her head from side to side, letting Alicia open up about her record.

"And, as you were on your way up the rankings, did you have any detractors? Anyone that didn't think you deserved to be in those matches, or wanted to disparage what you were managing?"

How had that gone? That was an excellent question, really. Adrian had called her a sadistic bitch, Alicia had promised to leave her the title once she’d beaten her and they parted having decided that they were going to fight in the modern equivalent of a pit fight.

”Pretty well,” Alicia answered non-committedly. She was much more happy to talk about the triple threat match, if she was entirely honest.

”Nobody I can think of,” the British amazon said after a moment, choosing to take the last question first as the simplest, ”At least nobody’s said anything to my face. I know not everyone’s a fan but nobody’s denied I’ve got what it takes. As for that match…”

Alicia blew out a slow sigh, shaking her head and leaning back in her chair.

”That was the first hardcore match I’ve ever been in and the first triple threat. I practically kicked Liberty’s head off twice and I nearly had to crack Abattoir’s ribs before she’d tap. In between, I got hit with a kendo stick, steel elbow pads and I nearly got put through a table into the bargain. Oh, and a ladder. I ached all over the next day. And when I say ‘nearly’, I mean ‘would have if she’d left it a second longer’.”

At which point, she really felt she’d driven her point home. Any match where serious bodily injury was the only way to pull out a win was, in her book, a tough match. She’d still like a chance to take Abattoir on by herself, standard rules and none of those toys littered around.

But Helvetica had been absolutely right. The only way to imagine what that had been like would be to go through it yourself. That wasn’t something Alicia would recommend to anyone she actually liked though.

"After that kind of display, I'm guessing a lot of folks in the locker room aren't saying a lot of what they'd like to say, 'to your face.' Sounds like a pretty good laundry list of hardcore bits, there, I imagine that padded the resume pretty well, for the hardcore title match, huh?"

Helvetica nodded along with her own words, as she looked Alicia up and down. The British Amazon had a cool, calm demeanor, and Helvetica respected that. In the "student of the game's" eyes, it helped give that legitimate fighter feel. As if somehow the string of legitimate fights hadn't done it.

"So, having been through all of that, can you tell me a little bit about your game plan, moving toward the next match?" Helvetica asked, leaning forward and planting her hand on her chin. "After a match like that, it seems like a lot of fighters go one of two ways. Sometimes, they get a taste for it, and don't want to ever go through another match without cracking at least a chair over someone's head. Others never want to be near another table, ladder or chair again in their life. So, what about you? Give you any ideas for your next hardcore match, or an idea of what to avoid?"

”If people want to gossip behind my back, that’s their problem. As far as I’m concerned, I’m happy to let my actions speak for me.”

She wasn’t in the company to worry about what the rest of the roster thought out of the ring. Sure, there were people whose opinions she cared about. But did she need the rest of the roster to like her to validate herself or her abilities somehow? No, definitely not.

”That’s really two questions,” Alicia answered after a moment’s thought. ”I mean, my game plan is the same as it always is. Adrian Kytes is going to get the best I can throw at her. And, if she lets me land that kick or get these around her-“ She slapped her thigh, ”-Then I think you’ll be seeing a new champion. Simple. What you’re asking about hardcore matches though…”

The redhead tapped her fingers thoughtfully on her bicep.

”You watched the match, right?”

Because, in Alicia’s mind that was a given, she carried right on without waiting for confirmation. Who’d interview a fighter without watching the handful of matches she’d had to date? That would be incredibly unprofessional and she wasn’t even in any sort of journalism herself.

”About halfway through, I guess, I had Abattoir in a triangle. But the point is… Well, she was reaching for a staple gun when I put her out. Tables, ladders, chairs I can cope with. They’re not my thing but I can deal. Staple guns are something else.”

Her lips twisted and she shrugged.

”Overall, I prefer standard rules so hopefully this’ll be my last hardcore match for a while. And if that means I don’t walk away with the title…”

The kickboxer shrugged again, expecting the gesture to convey plenty without her having to say it.