Peace offerings...

It was almost midday and the lockers in the AFW gym were empty as it usually happened at this time. People who trained in the morning had already left and those who trained in the afternoon weren´t here yet. Thus Natalia was all alone and already weary of waiting. It had been almost an hour now but for the blue-eyed cutie it seemed like it had been days. Patience wasn´t The Dream´s forte, and waiting for someone you didn´t really wanted to meet only made it worse. And Natalia didn´t really wanted to meet with Taylor, but she had to; she owed Taylor an apology after having ambushed and knocked her unconscious. So although part of her wanted to knock Taylor unconscious again, mainly because of what Taylor did to Adrian, she knew she had to do the right thing, be civil, stay calm, accept the blame and ask for forgiveness.

It was not going to be easy, specially the be civil and stay calm part, Taylor had a special ability to drive people crazy, Natalia had seen it but she had fortunately never experienced it first hand...and she didn´t wanted to. So she had kind of prepared for this encounter by relaxing and practicing a sort of meditation. 'I´m not going to let her anger me. I´m not going to let her anger me. I´m not going to let her anger me.' Natalia had repeated inside her head like a mantra trying to reach a state of internal peace, but after waiting for Taylor for over an hour her mantra had changed to 'Where the fuck is she. Where the fuck is she. Where the fuck is she."

Natalia had been told that Taylor usually arrived to train around eleven and at that time she had come, but Taylor hadn´t shown her face and The Dream was starting to fear that Taylor may not be coming at all. The Dream let out a tired sigh and closed her eyes as if she was going to fall asleep. She was already laying on her back on the lockers bench, her legs hanging lazily at each side of it, and over her taut bell a box of chocolates she had brought as peace offering for Taylor. She was wearing a pair of very short cutoff jeans that let most of her long toned legs to be shown until they reached her sneakers; a pink tank top that made it very clear that she wasn´t wearing a bra.

The silence of the lockers and the boredom started to make Natalia feel drowsy. She placed her hands behind the back of her head to get comfortable and soon her mind began to drift away like dreaming but without being fully asleep. Thinking about the recent events with Taylor and Adrian´s revenge attempt, as well as her own revenge attempts and competitiveness... and all the trouble it had caused. Natalia´s lovely face twisted into a cute grimace as she frowned, her mind wandering into dark memories, the things she was taught to hold as true, that had been so deeply ingrained in her that she had to make a conscious effort to go against them. 'forgiving an offense is an invitation to the commission of another'.... 'never postpone vengeance'... 'revenge tastes better when the wound still hurts'... 'eye for an eye' a sensuous and utterly evil voice repeated inside Natalia´s head, a voice she knew all to well. The last sentence echoed in The Dream´s head over and over at the same time a curvaceous silhouette seemed to appear from the dark corners of Natalia´s mind, a tall slender blonde woman, all dressed in black, smoking a cigar with a whip in her hands and an eye-patch on the right eye. 'eye for an eye' it kept repeating, and although Natalia wasn´t truly sleeping she squirmed in the bench as if she was having a nightmare.

Taylor had arrived at the gym early, which was ridiculously rare. She always slept late; that morning she woke up early. She couldn't fall back asleep. She had nothing to do, and couldn't stand to keep staring at the same four walls, so she put on a white tank top and a deep blue jacket with a collar that fit close and had loops for her thumbs to keep the sleeves down, added her capri-length black stretchy pants that clung to her curves and made her perky butt look awesome, and a pair of running shoes, and left for the gym.

Upon arriving, she found that she couldn't bear to do the same exhausting things in that same room for yet another day. Training alone wasn't easy.

Rather than risk running into someone she didn't want to see, she took a break from the gym and decided to just go for a long run. She stashed her street clothes in her locker and took off down the city sidewalks to the beach. The chilly autumn air quickly had her cheeks bright red. As she began to sweat, the wind over the water cooled her off, refreshed her, made her keep running to stay warm.

She didn't know how far she'd gone, she never kept track, but it was the longest run she'd done... ever. She was exhausted by the end, and she took a few moments on her bench outside the gym-side door of the Friction building to recover. She felt better. A change of scenery, some good exercise, some time to think without having to worry about all of the junk that went on in the Friction building, they were just what she needed.

Finally, she headed back for the lockers and found them almost empty. Her heart sank when she recognized one girl. She'd been doing so well avoiding Adrian and Natalia and everyone else she couldn't stand, and today her streak broke. Natalia was an early-riser. She couldn't stand morning people, especially in the morning.

"What's up, skank?" She said easily as she breezed past Natalia to her locker. "Are you waiting for someone to loan you some clothes? Or... a bra, jeez. If you're trying to turn some tricks, maybe go up the strip to the bars or something." She pulled her duffel bag out of her locker but was hesitant to change in front of Natalia. It didn't feel right.

Natalia had sunk so deep in her horrible daydreaming, that only when Taylor's loud irritating voice reached her ears did she woke up; startled and shocked just like someone waking up from a nightmare, Natalia looked around disoriented while her heart raced like a crazy horse inside her chest. It took her a couple of seconds to realize that she was in the AFW lockers and the person talking was none other than Taylor, and as strange as it may be, she felt actually relieved and happy that it was Taylor talking to her.

The Dream took a second to calm down and breath back and then another second to try to recall what Taylor had just said. She didn't knew much of English slang, so she had no idea what 'turn some tricks" meant, but she guessed that coming from Taylor, it was surely some sort of insult. This was going to be hard.

Natalia closed her eyes, took a deep breath and repeated to herself inside her mind I'm not going to let her anger me. I'm not going to let her anger me. I'm not going to let her anger me. And protected with this mantra she got up and stood behind Taylor hidding her chocolate box behind her back.

"Eh euhm?... Taylor-san? Erhm.. Can I have a word with tou?" she asked.

Taylor shut her locker and turned to face Natalia. She decided to just shower and change when she got home. That way she wouldn't have to face the inevitable ridicule from Adrian's bodyguard. She knew her type, and her collective experience with Natalia so far had been anything but pleasant, there was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.

She arched an eyebrow at Natalia. "Talk if you want to, whatever makes you happy, but I'm having an alright day so far so don't ruin it. And I'm outta here, so if you wanna talk, you're going to have to walk."

Taylor didn't slow down as she walked past Natalia for the door. She couldn't slow down. She couldn't allow herself time enough to feel anything about this very photogenic blue-eyed brunette and her perpetually well-put-together hair and clothes and junk. Screw her, she might think that she was better than Taylor, but that didn't mean Taylor had to agree.

"But..." Natalia started saying but it was too late as Taylor was already leaving. "Wait. Taylor-san, this will take only a minute..." the blue-eyed cutie tried to explain perplexed at Taylor's reaction. The way this girl jumped to action and avoided listenning to anybody reminded her so much of someone else.

The Dream sighed and began to follow Taylor, having to accelerate the pace. "Please... I just need a minute..." Natalia said as she rushed behind Taylor getting a little desperate. She stretched an arm, thinking of grabbing hold of Taylor's arm to stop her, but she decided against it. It was surely only going to cause more trouble.

So instead she decided to outrun Taylor, suddenly sprinting to get ahead of her and turning around, planting herself firmly in front of her. Natalia's face was already a little flushed and showed some signs of annoyance. She stood there blocking Taylor's way and tried to speak as fast as she could to avoid giving Taylor a chance to say something else.
Fortunately, Natalia had already though and rehearsed what she was going to say. "Taylor-san, I am sorry. I want to apologize for having ambushed you. I should have stopped Adrian's crazy plan instead of having helped her. It was a very stupid thing to do. I'm very very sorry for having hurt you and I hope you can forgive me. Please take this chocolates as a token of friendship." Natalia said almost without breathing as she did a polite bow, keeping her head down, and offered the box of chocolates to Taylor.

Taylor stopped when Natalia got in front of her. She folded her arms and tossed her bright blue hair back, but her bangs fell right back over one eye. She waited impatiently for Natalia to say whatever she had to say and get it over with.

"Wha-" She was cut off by Natalia's speech. She arched an eyebrow, but the longer she went the more irritated she became. After she finished, there was a brief, but awkward, pause.

"I don't eat chocolate." Taylor scowled, and took a step closer to Natalia. She leaned into her and locked eyes with her. "You don't gotta apologize to me, champ. I don't think you're worried about my feelings, though, so if doing this makes you feel better then more power to ya." Her voice dropped to a low growl. "And you could never hurt me."

Without hesitation, she stepped around Natalia and kept walking. She kept a brisk pace, not wanting to prolong her time with Natalia and risk going through the usual red-faced and shaky-handed routine of losing her temper and eventually starting to cry like a stupid baby. What a load of shit.

But something occurred to her, and she stopped. She turned around to face Natalia and fixed her eyes on her again. There was another pause, she wasn't sure how to say it or if she even wanted to. "Did... Akashi put you up to this?" She asked in the same deadly serious tone, but with a nearly imperceptible quaver.

Natalia blinked surprised someone would refuse chocolates. Obviously Taylor was just being stupidly proud by rejecting the chocolates she would surely love. The blue-eyed cutie pulled the box of chocolates back and hugged it closely; if Taylor didn't wanted them, she knew someone who would surely enjoy them, herself!

She stared clamly back into Taylor's eyes without blinking. In a sense, Taylor was right, Natalia didn't cared much about how she felt, actually it was very hard for Natalia to care for other peoples feelings unless she had grew close to them, and she was certainly not close to Taylor...and didn't wanted to be. The Dream sighed loudly, she hated the fact that Taylor was right, she was more worried about dealing with her guilt and 'cleaning her karma' than anything else.

She stopped looking at Taylor, although her eyes seemed to still be staring into Taylor, she was actually looking into herself. Natalia didn't liked being so selfish, specially because she hardly ever noticed her selfishness unless someone pointed it out, like Taylor had done.

Having grown with the 'every girl for herself. Everybody is eithe on top or under you' ideas constantly reminded thru all her life, it was very difficult for her not being selfish. Natalia's lovely lips twisted in disgust with herself; she had to stop making up excuses.

Natalia opened her mouth to say something but Taylor didn't let her speak as the blue-haired girl claimed she couldn't hurt her. The Dream frowned clearly annoyed. But she contained herselft for saying anything else. Remindind Taylor how she had knocked her out was definitively not going to help with all the apologizing thingie.

A second later Taylor was already getting away and Natalia felt this had been a complete failure. When suddenly Taylor came back to get in her face. Natalia blinked again at Taylor's question and then raised and eyebrow. "Akashi-sama??... No... Not really. The Dream said tilting her head to the side to study Taylor's face, wondering what that nearly imperceptible quaver had been.
"Akashi-sama told me I should apologize...to Adrian... Not to you..." Natalia said, telling a strict but not full version of the truth as she looked deeply into Taylor's face, trying to read her.

Taylor's scowl almost turned into a sneer. By the look on Natalia's face, she knew she was right. That was little consolation given what she was right about.

"You. Are totally full of shit." She said in a low voice.

Maybe Natalia was telling the truth and Akashi hadn't had anything to do with this. Taylor did not need Akashi butting into her life constantly and trying to take care of her. She wasn't her mother. Taylor loved Akashi, she was the best friend she'd had in a long time, but she had no right to try to fix things for Taylor as if she wasn't capable of doing anything right herself.

"Alright." She sighed heavily, annoyed. "Thank you sooo much! That means soooo much to me! Gosh, I'm sure sorry if I haven't been very nice, but I'm kind of a major lunatic, and I guess everyone knows, I'm little miss Daddy issues. Do you want to be friends? I could braid your hair and we could talk about boys and giggle a lot. Do you want to rent a two-person bike and ride around a park?" She finished, put her valley-girl act away, and raised an eyebrow at Natalia like she was ridiculous. "Feel better? Maybe now you can go back to looking down your nose at me from far away."

Taylor kicked her knees up to her chest, one at a time, to limber up. Partly she felt the need to loosen up after her run, and before the walk home, but there was another part of her that just knew she'd have to fight. She turned her back on Natalia and started again to walk away.

Natalia's face started to turn more and more red. Despite her best efforts The Dream was starting to feel that her blood began to boil. There was something about Taylor, more than simply her words that made Natalia want to strangle her. She crossed her arms in front of herself in a sort of defensive posture and looked back into Taylor's eyes in a more menacing way.

"No, Taylor. I don't want to be your friend." Natalia said coldly. "No. I don't want YOU to touch my hair..." she continued with a mocking smirk as she looked at Taylor's blue hair with disdain. "No. I don't like boys..." she added with a colder tone than ever. "Yes. I have a bike. Kawasaki ninja ZX-RR... But I don't want you to get even close to it..." she said without hiding the pride. "No. I don't feel better. And...no, I don't look down at you. I couldn't care less about you!!! " Natalia ended her tirade almost yelling.


Then Taylor began to kick her legs up, and Natalia took a step back, sensing that the girl wanted to fight. One way or another Natalia feel it as a sort of aggression. But then Taylor turned around and started to walk away which made Natalia conclude that Taylor had been trying to intimidate her and then leave.

"Grrrrr..." Natalia growled cutely despite how furious she was " you are the most irritating persona I have ever knew!" she finally yelled just as Taylor was leaving.

"Careful." Taylor said back over her shoulder. "It's starting to sound like I'm pretty important to you."

She paused and turned enough to make eye contact with Natalia. "I bet you talk about me when I'm not around, huh." She said with a crooked smile. "If you ever want to do something about it, though, we can settle this any time you want. Sneaking up behind someone like a freaking coward only shows that you're not confident that you could win that fight. And why would you be confident? Look at you. You probably spend more time on your hair than you do training. You will never, ever beat me in a fair fight, because I'm a fighter, and you're not."

Again Taylor turned her back and kept walking. She knew that Natalia was ready to burst, so she had to be ready to move if she came after her. Her ears pricked up as she listened for the tell-tale sounds of someone coming at her from behind. She was exhausted from her run, and this was not the best time for her to have to fight, but if Natalia wanted a piece of her she wouldn't turn her down.