A villainous encounter in a cafeteria (?) (for K0hryuu)

It has been one day since Clara has lost her match with Maddie Hanezawa, and about 12 hours since she had an ice pack on her lap to soothe the pain in her nethers after the encounter.

Despite losing to someone with Maddie's win/loss ratio, she wasn't too upset. For her, wrestling wasn't just a sport. It could be used to provide entertainment in a lot of ways than just being athletic competition or... other ways AFW found to use wrestling. Only thing she held against her opponent were various cheapshots she hit her with. Not even so much groin shots (really, those were more her fault), than hitting her with a chair.

Going back to Earth after thinking about yesterday's match, she was walking around AFW's cafeteria for food. She still didn't know much about Tokyo, arriving to the city very shortly before the end of 2016. As such, there weren't too many places close to her house that she knew had good food (Most of the time being lazy to cook herself), so she mostly ended up getting it at AFW's cafeteria, like she did today.

Additionally, she always ended up eating alone. Granted, she knew Melody and Navi lived here, but Clara wanted to surprise her friends with her appearance in the company, before invinting them for food.

As such, after taking a plate of fries and chicken, she sat at a free table, planning to simply eat, leave for a supermarket to grab some snacks for the evening and then go back to her apartment...

Maddie had slept in the morning after her match, not even leaving her bed until around noon. Depressingly enough, Akiko and Yukiko were still stuck in the AFW medical facility for another day, practically imprisoned there until the nurses cleared them for their injuries they sustained at Avalanche. Even though she finally won a match after all this time, she wasn't able to celebrate it with her only friends her in Tokyo.

Maddie trudged out of her room in nothing but her underwear, immediately feeling her stomach growl with hunger. Unfortunately, her kitchen was pretty barren, and until the money for this last match came in, her funds were sparse. With little other option, the dark-haired girl threw on a tank top and shorts, heading out from her apartment and down to the main AFW building a few blocks away. With any luck, the cafeteria wouldn't be too crowded.

Of course, she wasn't going to be that lucky, especially having come so close to noon. Standing in line for a while, she was able to grab a burger, fries and a drink, carrying her tray out to the dining area. Naturally the place was packed, without an open table in sight. Too tired and hungry to waste time wandering around, she tried to find any open seat, hoping whoever else at the table would be courteous enough to let her sit down.

Spotting a table with only one girl sitting at it, Maddie quickly shuffled over, "Excuse me, would it be okay if I sat here? This place is waaaay too packed..."

"...yeah, it's OK---0_0", Clara said in a meek voice, before looking and recognizing the girl who beat her the previous day.

"That's one hell of a coincidence"

Realizing that she is glaring at Maddie in a slightly creepy fashion (and knowing that the girl didn't know it was her without her mask), Clara would look back at her food tray:

"Yeah, sure, you can sit here if you want...", she repeated.

Maddie was a bit taken aback at the girl's reaction, thinking maybe she had startled her. "Oh, th-thanks..." The girl seemed strangely familiar in some way, but the tired and hungry jobber couldn't really think of why. It was highly possible this girl recognized her from one of her matches where she was ruthlessly stomped, which certainly made Maddie a bit uneasy, but she tried not to think about it as she sat down.

Not really sure how to deal with the awkward atmosphere, the dark-haired girl just started to eat her burger, while subtlety glancing over to check if her tablemate was still staring at her.

This wasn't the first time Clara had to eat with someone who beat her in a match before, nor was she uncomfortable with it. The only point of surprise was that it happened in AFW compared to the indy promotions in England, as in, a company with about 100s active wrestlers compared to small rosters of 10-30 people, not counting workers.

Going back to her fries, she would look at Maddie from time to time within a minute:

"...nah. She doesn't know it's me...does she? Let's go into this indirectly."

"A...aren't you, Maddie Hanezawa of Black Feathers Gang?", she would finally ask.

Maddie visibly cringed as the mention of her name, all too aware of what kind of reputation she had. Though she considered trying to deny it, the dark-haired girl thought it be easier to just admit it, and just hope the girl didn't start asking any unpleasant questions.

"Y-yeah... That's me..." she mumbled, almost sounding a bit ashamed. It was pretty hard to be proud of yourself after getting publicly dominated and humiliated as many times as she had. Thinking it best to try and switch the topic away from herself, she looked over at Clara and asked, "A-are you new here? I uh don't think I've seen you before..."

Maddie immediately brightened up a bit as the girl brought up her recent win, rather than any of her countless defeats. Maybe that was the only one she had seen her in? "Y-yeah, she was a total clown... Thanks though, I really appreciate it." she chuckled, scratching the back of her head. Though she did wish that Akiko and Yukiko would have been the first ones to congratulate her, it still felt kind of nice.

"Oh, I see. How have your matches gone so far, uh... Sorry what's your name...?"

"Total clown? Well... that's kinda what I am. No point in getting offended, Clara thought as she got herself another fry.

"They weren't too bad, actually. I know a lot of wrestlers here are psychos. Guess I got lucky that both of them were fairly alright...one of them did hit me with a chair in the back and head though, that was painful...", Clara said, somewhat throwing a stealth insult to Maddie.

"Ohh yeah, I'm pretty aware of how psychotic some of them are..." Maddie replied bitterly, recalling some unpleasant memories. The mention of a chair did remind her of her match just last night, however something like that was incredibly commonplace.

"At least they didn't hit you with it somewhere like in the cu-" Maddie instantly cut herself off, nearly admitting to her constant misfortunes. Thinking on it briefly, she didn't remember ever getting low blowed with a chair specifically. A baseball bat, a metal rod, a leather whip, and some other nasty things, but never a chair. "A-ah don't let that get to you...! Could've been a lot worse, right...?"