Prinnys and personal problems (w/ Bluemouse)

Adrian had just finished an important workout session, after the last couple of matches which I won she knew that eventually she'd hit a brick wall in her singles run, and that meant practicing of all shit that is flippy.

A long session later, diving onto crash mats to test how well she could aim even the most complicated of dives, trying to walk along the top rope, and some general ring running for extra stamina it was time for a break. So she put her black sleevles jacket and pokemon hat back on, plugged some head phones in and began to tackle Disgaea DS for the 4th time, determined to get ever closer to 100% completion.

Most of Taylor's workouts were centered around speed and explosiveness and cardio. It wasn't enough to just be able to work off the top rope or pull off her springboards. She wanted her every movement to be fast and precise and to feel strong. She wanted to start fast and stay fast so that her opponents would never be able to catch up, and when she hit them she wanted them to think twice about being in the ring with her. Maybe her workouts didn't have a lot of structure to them yet, but she liked the results she got.

Since being paired up with the champ, Akashi Tanikaze, everything seemed different to Taylor. When she came to the gym, she worked just as hard as before but not out of some feeling of desperation, as though she needed to work that hard to avoid becoming prey for any of the predatory types that roamed the AFW. Now Taylor felt powerful, dangerous, unafraid, like she belonged there, and, heaven forbid, confident. Now she was the predator, but she wouldn't be preying on the weak just to feed her own sense of superiority like the other girls. She wasn't like that.

Taylor stood on a mat in the Friction gym, hugging a medicine ball and clad in sneakers, short black spandex workout shorts and an equally snug blue tank top. She was soaked with sweat, it beaded on her forehead and rolled down to the end off her nose, and was about to start in on another set of squat jumps when a new girl caught her eye. She'd never seen her before, and... what the hell was she doing?

Taylor became acutely aware that she'd been staring at the girl when her medicine ball slipped and landed on her foot. After some hopping and mental profanity, she picked up her towel and wiped off her face. She looked back at the girl.

Don't say anything, Taylor, she told herself. Just leave her be. She'd been trying so hard to be on her best behavior, and that meant keeping her mouth on a short leash. Just grab some water and come back for some more work.

"Hey!" She shouted at the girl. There was no one else in between the two of them, it was fairly obvious that she was talking to Adrian. "Whacha doin'? Waiting for your ride? Jeez, that's the most I've seen anyone sweat from working their thumbs." Keeping her mouth shut was so hard.

She looked over the girl's clothes. "Oh, are you here for the talent show? What's your talent?"

Adrian barely noticed all the noises around her with her headphones in, a few crashes and thuds went straight over her head as she kept focus on the small screen, trying to unwind before getting another session started, only noticing when she heard something that sounded like someone shouting.

She popped out her headphones, raising her head up from her seated position to see a blue haired girl looking right at her. "Yeah?" she shouted back, the cosplayer hadn't seen her come in the building and she was really sweating, she had to resist the urge to scrunch up her nose, she could smell her in the ring from her little seat.

She quickly pouted when Taylor started to talk smack to her. She didn't really know who she was much, or at least hadn't seen her face, but she was already trying to start something with her. She turned her eyes back to her screen trying to ignore her. Unfortunately keeping her mouth shut for extended periods of... let's say seconds... wasn't Adrian's strong suit either and she couldn't resist talking back "My talent?" She asked half sarcastically "kicking ass, it's kind of complicated, you wouldn't understand."

Taylor laughed loudly. "HAH!" She didn't know if she liked this girl or if she should just kick her ass and be done with it.

Grinning, Taylor mopped her bright blue bangs back from her forehead and out of her eyes. "Sorry, when you say 'kicking ass', do you mean up there..." She pointed to the practice ring, "Or down there?" She pointed down at Adrian's DS.

"Well either way, you're definitely dressed the part. You look pretty bad ass with your little truck-stop Poke-hat there. I don't remember, are leather vests cool? Either way, I'll admit, I'm pretty scared. Intimidated. Petrified. I'm just glad that you're sitting. With all that extra weight you probably don't get going anywhere too fast."

Taylor stopped about two meters away from Adrian. She stuck out her tongue and reached out with her foot as if to poke at Adrian's stomach with her toe from a distance. She snickered and turned away to go find a sink so she could cool off and refill her water bottle.

Adrian scowled at Taylor, trying to keep her tone to hold the same only partially interested choice but found it harder to maintain her smug voice with this level of assholishness from someone she didn't even know. "Either one's more than you could probably do." she mumbled, trying to focus her attention on her handheld.

Extra...weight? She thought to herself over and over. She wasn't that bad, 135 was normal for her height, right? "So what do you do here, are you actually a wrestler or are you just part of the general hazing package over here, because I kinda used that up after my first two wins here." she asked.

Taylor laughed again when she saw Adrian hesitate at the crack about her weight. It was so easy. Still, she grinned at Adrian with something approaching warmth while she paused on her way to get water.

"You got me, pokeball. I'm hazing, just a little bit." She was. "It works a couple different ways... For people who are going to make it in what we call 'the business', they get upset, but they realize that really we're just testing them and it's like motivation and they come out better. For people who don't belong in 'the business', they usually get real upset, try to prove themselves, fail, and then never come back. Can you guess which one you are?"

Sure she was only giving the girl a hard time, but she'd never ever let on to that. "Well, I'd say by your choice of hobby that you spend a lot of time sitting around, and you're lazy and you've never worked hard a day in your life. Maybe you've been lucky against whatever gimpy little schoolgirls they put you against, or god forbid you have a little talent, but that only carries you so far and when your luck runs out I think you'll be just fine with your new job pouring coffee or tearing tickets. Maybe they'd even let you do it here!"

All that wasn't usually Taylor's style. Maybe now that felt like more of a part of the group she was feeling more protective... and to her part of that was weeding out the weak ones. It felt weird. She'd always been in Adrian's place. She started filling her water bottle at the fountain.

That laugh was really grating, Adrian could feel it mocking her, but who was Taylor to challenge her drive to get anywhere, if she was going to quit early she'd gone through way worse than verbal hazings and she stuck to it then, persevered through the beatdowns and doubt from her own friends, and now someone thinks they're doing a favour by being the biggest asshole possible just to see if they'd still keep at it? Fuck those guys, it's one thing from your trainer when first starting out, another from someone like her "Oh I get it, you've kinda been here a few months more than me so you think that gives you the right to act like your my first wrestling teacher. Talking about 'the business'" she said with added air quotes "probably makes you think you know what you're talking about but actually just makes you look like an idiot who thinks that a year pro is enough to start treating everyone else like they're below you. Here's a newsflash, once you've got at least 5 years experience on me, worked for peanuts in front of small crowds in high school gyms for at least half of that, still doing stuff that you wouldn't see anywhere else, then you can ask about whether I'm motivated or not."

"I don't know you, you don't know me, so why start anything unless you're soo insecure about how you're doing you have to rub it in to everyone else how hardworking and how skilled and how awesome you are just so you've got a chance of convincing yourself that you actually belong here while trying to make everyone else feel like they don't. Well little miss 'I'm an asshole': Screw you, I don't have to prove anything. Now if you'll excuse me, I have explosive penguins to throw at demons before I actually get back to doing stuff." She shouted back, her voice cracking slightly as she flipped Taylor the bird before returning to her game. She was sick of people questioning her motivation, sure, she didn't exactly look like the most motivated girl in the world: sitting down with her eyes glued to a screen trying to ignore a schoolyard bully, but she was trying not to let what Taylor said change her. If she started changing her schedule just because someone insulted her then it'd just have proved what Taylor said about her, she wasn't desperate to prove herself anymore and wasn't going to let some New York punk push her around like... like she's doing now. she thought sadly..

Taylor strolled back onto the gym floor, sipping from her full water bottle. "Oh man. I guess I really hit a nerve. Sorry, porky, I didn't mean to get you all emotional. Do you want to dry your eyes on my towel?" She asked with a grin, holding up one end of her towel.

So apparently this girl started wrestling at age 12 and thought that made her the greatest thing ever. An 'innovator of poke-violence'. There was always the chance that she really was amazing, though. Who knew? Taylor didn't dislike her. She wasn't sure if she liked her, either. She was just having a little fun with her whether she knew it or not.

Taylor leaned up against the wall a few feet away from Adrian. She quietly watched her do her thing, watched her tune out the room and focus on her explosive penguin demon-throwing. After enough time that it seemed like maybe she'd leave her be, Taylor popped open the top of her water bottle and deftly squirted Adrian with it. She laughed. Then again for good measure. It was just as funny that time.

But Taylor didn't have all day to just hassle some girl, she had work to do. Her legs were still a little shaky from the workout she'd done already, but she'd had enough of a break that she could get some more done. She found where her medicine ball had rolled to and hugged it against her chest, then went back to a set of squat jumps.

Adrian was starting to remember why she picked up gaming in the first place, it made it easy to tune out everything else and relax for a while, no bullies, no-one else, just her and a whole other world to explore and relax in, a bit of escapism with no New York jackasses unless they went flying off the bumper of an "in all but name only" Ferrari until reality reared it's ugly head again.

"Ah!" She screamed as Taylor sprayed water in her face, trying to push away the second spray with her hand. It wasn't that much water and she'd been sprayed with a lot more but the laugh made it worse, the laugh made her feel like she was back at school all over again. The little nerd in the corner, no friends near her, just a bunch of people who thought it'd be funny to pick on her.

She'd always been taught not to rise to them, but Adrian had always thought that was because there were often 5 of them and only one of her, however one bitch who she was probably on equal footing with her she could probably rise to. She started the spray something in the other girl's face when she's distracted war.

Slowly shutting down the game the aggravated cosplayer slipped a small capsule into her mouth and walked up behind Taylor, tapping her twice on the shoulder to get her attention while puffing out her cheeks, when the New Yorker turned around to face her though she'd get a face full of green mist.

While Taylor's body strained and ached, her mind began to wander. The more she thought about the girl and what had just happened, the less confident she became about it. She was just trying to give the girl a hard time, maybe because she didn't know how to do anything else, and she was starting to think that maybe it didn't come out like that. It felt more and more like plain old bullying.

Was that really what she just did? That wasn't her at all, though. She couldn't have, after all of her time spent being bullied. There was no way she would've stooped to that level... was there? She wasn't even sure why she did any of that. Sure, she was used to running her mouth, but usually the people she talked trash to were the aggressors and this girl was just minding her own business.

Taylor felt the warmth in her cheeks as she blushed. If Akashi was there she would never have let Taylor get out of hand like that. She knew what she had to do, and she hated it. Really, really, really hated it. But she knew it was the right thing to do, and she wouldn't be able to live with herself thinking that she was turning into a bully. She'd have to kick her own ass.

She was going to apologize.

Taylor stood up straight and turned around to look for the girl. "Hey, I- ack!" She began, and got hit with a face full of green. She spluttered and spat and dropped the medicine ball again, which again landed on the same foot. She hopped back on one foot and tripped over her gym bag and went crashing down on the mat, pawing at her face.

"Wh...wha..." What was there to say? Once she cleared her eyes she looked at her hands and saw green. Everything was green. Why was everything green? What a world. "What the hell, Porky? I was just... I was..." She reached for her towel, half blind, but couldn't find it. Instead she pulled up the hem of her tank top and wiped at her face with it, exposing her entire midsection in the process.

She looked up into the girl's eyes. "Why?"