Peace offerings...

Natalia fought with all she got to protect her lovely hair from Taylor's messy hands, and when the punkgirl pulled back she was nearly dragged off the bench, but she managed to let Taylor's hands off to end up sitting up on the bench. She immediately got up on the opposite side of the bench from Taylor.

"You play mind games with yourself, Taylor-chan..." Natalia said brushing her perfect hair with her hands. "...you are only fooling yourself... she continued adjusting her skimpy attire.

"...and when you run your mouth it is insulting, hurtful and abusive..." the blue-eyd cutie added and then she turned around and walked to the door. "...enjoy YOUR bench... Bully..."

"Ohhhhh, shit, what am I to do? Talking trash and walking off, such a pro move. I can't really be a bully though since I just wanted to be left alone!" Taylor shouted after Natalia. She was angry. Irritated. But beyond that she wasn't upset. For once, she was in control and wasn't in any danger of crying. It felt good, but she knew eventually her mind would wander to what Natalia said and wonder if maybe she was right. Somehow.

"Hold on, you forgot your bra- Ohhh, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot that you don't wear underwear. Less to take off, right? Alright, walk away, alright. See you later, always a pleasure. Hey, apology accepted, by the way, I can see that you're really goddamn sincere. You're a very caring person, I'd love to meet your parents. I bet they're great." She had to talk fast to fit everything in before Natalia reached the door. Honestly, she was just unloading with everything she thought might hurt Natalia. she wanted blood. She started it, Taylor was just trying to keep up.

Natalia didn't wanted to like run away from Taylor but she did hurried to leave, not wanting to suffer another dose of Taylor's poisonous mind and mouth. Unfortunately she didn't walked fast enough. She frowned and grit her teeth as she endured most of the taunts but when Taylor mentioned her non existant parents, the blue-eyed cutie froze where she was standing.

Natalia turned around very very slowly, her face was bright red and twisted into a grimace of pure fury, she was gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt, her whole body was trembling and her fist were clenched so tight that her knuckles were turning white. A couple of tears slipped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she looked at Taylor remaining completely silent for quite a while.

When Natalia finally spoke it was with a broken voice that gave away that she was struggling not to start crying. "Remember when I told you it required a real mean bitch to hurt me?"
Natalia asked with barely contained fury. "Congratulations... You are a horrible human being..." she added and then she turned away and began to walk, almost run, covering her cute face as she began to cry.

Natalia stopped. It looked like Taylor had successfully burned her. That'd teach her to try messing with Taylor's head. She wasn't sure which part did it, but it seemed like the parents thing. Figures, no one ended up at AFW who didn't have some horrific home life growing up.

But then Taylor got a good look at Natalia's face. She wasn't fighting anymore. The game, if that's what you could call it, was over. She looked awful, and it stopped Taylor dead. She tried saying something, but nothing came out, and all of her confidence and bravado disappeared in a second. "Oh, hey..." She said quietly.

"Hey, I didn't mean to... hey!" Taylor trotted after Natalia. "Jeez, look, I was just trying to get you back, man. Like you said, you've got to get people back so they won't come after you anymore, and every always... Hey, c'mon. Stop it."

Natalia might actually have been more fragile than Taylor. It was weird. Again her instincts of self-preservation and her guilt battled for control. She wanted to just get out of there and never speak of this encounter again, but she just couldn't bring herself to leave. She had never expected to be able to actually hurt Natalia with anything she said, at best she was hoping to piss her off, but maybe she was just faking. More mind games. She was probably faking.

Natalia hurried to the exit, she didn't cared anymore if it looked like she was running, she just wanted to get away from Taylor, and from the AFW building. It was pretty bad that a jerk like Taylor saw her in such a broken state, she didn't needed any other possible opponents seeing her this weak.
Then again, running was complicated since Natalia could barely see a thing, her lovely and sore blue-eyes were filled with tears and she was trying to hide her face, so what she could do was barely more than walk fast.

Before leaving the corridor that connected the lockers, Natalia stopped. She didn't wanted to go through the main hall of the building. There was surely going to be more than a few people there and she didn't wanted them to see her. The other exit was through the gym, but that meant going back to the lockers where Taylor was.

Natalia then thought of maybe hidding somewhere, but she just couldn't think clearly. So she leaned against a well and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the floor. She hugged her legs, placing her head between her knees. She had to go either through Taylor or through the main hall, and neither option sounded any good.

Maybe Taylor would leave after a few minutes, and then Natalia would be able to exit through the gym.

Taylor followed slowly after Natalia. She was hesitant to do or say anything, or even to let Natalia see her following. She was pretty sure that Natalia started the whole thing and that she was just nuts, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was responsible. She didn't want to just make a mess and leave her hanging, so she couldn't bring herself to make a run for it, no matter how much she wanted. Seeing Natalia like that, their little verbal fight was over. How could she fight someone like that? It wouldn't even be a fight, it'd just be abuse.

She stood a bit down the hall from her, standing close to the wall. There had to be something to say or something, but Taylor knew if she opened her mouth all that would come would be more trash talk, regardless of her intentions. She stayed quiet and looked at the floor. Her hands wandered aimlessly, she didn't have any pockets to keep them still, and even if she did they were still covered in chocolate.

She sighed heavily. Maybe there was something she could do. She moved purposefully past Natalia into the bathroom adjacent the locker room and washed her hands. She disappeared into the gym for several minutes and eventually reappeared in the hallway with Natalia.

"Hey." She said, and held out a wad of paper towel. "Fix your mascara, it's not Halloween yet." She dropped an armload of padded training gear on the floor next to her. There were two pairs each of thick sparring gloves, shin pads, and headgear.

"C'mon." She slipped off her shoes and socks and set them against the wall and began to pull on the shin pads. "There's only one way people like us work through stuff."

Natalia just curled up more and pressed her body against the wall when she heard Taylor coming. She wrapped her arms around her head and tried to cover her ears with her biceps to avoid hearing Taylor's taunts. She hated feeling like this, unnable to control her emotions, crying like a baby, clearly showing that despite how hard she tried she just couldn't get over her past.

Then she heard a ball falling besides her and she raised her head to notice the training gear and Taylor offering her a bit of paper. She looked puzzled at Taylor through her tearful eyes and blinked, shaking her head like disgusted.

"You want to fight?" she asked incredulous althought the answer seemed pretty obvious. Natalia had no trouble believing that a bully like Taylor would like to fight. What surprised her was that Taylor seemed to be offering it as a way for working out their differences.

"Why?" asked Natalia, taking the wad of paper from Taylor's hand to try to clean her tears.

"Don't ask questions, dammit, just get your shit together, alright? We're not going to fight, we're going to spar. Sparring isn't fighting, it's training. Consider this a free pass to punch me in the face."

Taylor was still exhausted, though, and hungry. She wasn't going to be on top of her game, but she had no intention of going all out and trying to best Natalia. All she really had to do was stand in front of her for a while and avoid looking stupid until Natalia had worked some of the crazy out of her system. People used to beat on Taylor all the time but evil, hateful reasons, it only made sense to let someone have a shot at her to help make something better.

She finally wriggled into her shin pads and tossed her hair back as she slipped her headgear over her pigtails. She securely strapped it on and began to fuss with her gloves. "I'm going to look pretty stupid if I'm the only one standing here with full sparring gear in the middle of the hallway, c'mon." Hopefully no one would bother them out here in the hall, or they could go outside. She figured that Natalia probably didn't want to go be around people in the gym when she was all screwed up. Taylor wouldn't either.

Natalia looked up at Taylor still sobbing. She had an idea of what Taylor was trying, but the whole friendship-through-fighting theory may work for Akashi, but Natalia had serious doubts it will work with Taylor. The blue-eyed cutie felt she needed a hug more than a fight, or a sparring, but she didn't wanted to reject this weird gesture of...friendship?

"Ok...just sparring...and you got to promise to keep quiet..." Natalia said as she slowly got up. " Let me clean my face..." she said as she move to the bathroom to wash her face and clear the blackened tears.

"Okay."

Taylor really wasn't sure what she was doing, but she figured that with her being the way she was, everyone could benefit from kicking her around a little. She wasn't trying to make up and be friends with Natalia, but she didn't know what else to do. It was perfectly obvious that she wasn't going to make Natalia feel any better, or stop crying, by talking to her. That never worked. And as for anything else... she didn't know Natalia very well, if at all. She wanted to keep her distance.

She velcro'd her gloves tightly around her wrists and began to stretch a little and warm up while she waited for Natalia. Her mind wandered, and she began thinking about her own parents. Everyone had their problems. Taylor hadn't exactly had a picture-perfect upbringing either.

"So, neither of my parents know what I do. They don't know about the wrestling. They don't even know where I am." She mused, talking to Natalia from around the corner. "I don't really think of them as people that I should have to talk to or anything. I think at a certain point, stuff sucks, and you just wash your hands of it and move on. Ya know?" She threw a couple quick combinations to loosen up her shoulders and stretched her hips.