Sappy

From Jocelyn's position on the stairs behind her, she could see under the hem of Allison's dress to her upper thighs each time she climbed a stair. Allison certainly didn't mind, she'd intended to let Jocelyn take in the sight during their silent ascent to the 5th floor.

She let her hips sway ever-so-slightly more to each side than they had to with every step and kept her immaculate posture. Jocelyn was becoming a bit insubordinate, which Allison knew would happen. She had no interest in someone that could easily be corralled and beaten into submission. It was the conflict that was so intoxicating to her. If Jocelyn was beginning to think that Allison wasn't all she was cracked up to be, let her have a quiet moment to think about it while she watched.

Another swipe of her card at a door at the top of the stairs opened a door to a large, open-floored apartment, exquisitely furnished and without a hint of excess. The floors through most of it were ebony, stone tile in the small kitchen, and the furniture was minimal and perfectly arranged. On the left was a fireplace with a couple comfortable-looking overstuffed chairs and a rug, a large bookshelf on the wall adjacent. Allison dropped her purse on a chair and continued past the fireplace.

She waved her hand at the chairs. "Do sit down, madam." She said with sarcasm that only she would know. She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment to collect a bottle of deep red wine and a pair of glasses.

"I thought perhaps this would be a good opportunity to get to know each other better. Isn't that a good idea?" She sat on one chair and placed the wine and glasses on a table next to it. She moved her purse and dropped it on the floor where it landed with a heavy thud.

"Now what haven't we talked about?" She asked while uncorking and pouring the wine.

Jocelyn was nearly hypnotized by Allison's sultry walk that she sook her head when the card was swiped. She walked into Allisn's abode and looked around with wide eyes, expecting something rather lavish. When she stepped inside, she was slightly disappointed. The furniture was amazing but Jocelyn expected more opulence. Still, she admired the place and was enthralled until Allison snapped her back to reality with her condescending way she was addressed. She furrowed her brow explicitly for Allison before nodding and sitting down and looking quietly and staring nervously at her hands.

When Allison offered to get to know one another, Jocelyn looked up and tried not to have her joy show. "Y-yes... That sounds good... She muttered and flashed a weak smile.

"A-ah... Um..." Jocelyn put her finger to her lips. "There's a lot we haven't talked about... We.. Uh.. Barely even know each other... That sounds weord doesn't it... Considering..." She didn't know wh she suddenly felt nervous.

Allison breathed a laugh and smiled warmly. "Yes. I suppose you're right."

She lifted both glasses and held one out to Jocelyn. She took a sip of her own and gave the little Chinese girl a look out of the corner of her eye. "You needn't be nervous. Aren't you comfortable? Shall I build a fire to help sooth your anxieties? Mmmm, that would be nice, wouldn't it? While I do so, little Lu Jiao, why don't you tell me more about how you came to be here."

She took another sip of her wine and put the glass down. She stood and moved to the fireplace, and while she began arranging a couple logs with some kindling, her hands moving quickly and competently, she asked "So you're a rebellious girl out to spurn her cold, overbearing father... Why on earth would you choose to do so by coming here and undertaking the work you have in AFW? Certainly there are less dangerous ways of exasperating one's parents."

Jocelyn smiled back slightly when Allison smiled feeling slightly relived. She took the wine and nodded her head. She then lifted her glass and let the wine pour down her throat. She wasn't too much of a drinker but she definitely wasn't going to pass it up and it definitely tasted good. She wasn't as delicate with her glass as she probably should be, downing half the glass with her first attempt.

"Yeah... Fire sounds pretty cozy." she said and flashed a more genuine smile but then gripped her glass tightly. "Don't call me that. I don't call you... Whatever your last name is. Call me Jocelyn." She took another sip of wine and then looked at Allison. She then sighed.

"Sure." She paused to think. "Well... I wanted to get away and I couldn't stay in Japan or go to China. Japan was sort of the best of both worlds that still had cities. That was really the only thing that I wanted to do to get back at him... The wrestling too, I guess but that was mostly me wanting to let out some steam. I was taught Wu Shu my whole life and was always the tougest chick in my school. Figured it would be fun to get paid for beating some cunt's arse." Jocelyn smirked and finished off her glass.

"What about you? Some hot bitch like you getting all down and dirty. Doesn't seem right to me, I guess. Figured you would be too good for that. Least I belong in this part of the world. Don't they have his junk over in England?"

Allison smiled again, this time it was more distant. "They do have it in England, but not on this scale. You may have guessed that a person like me needs scale. And exposure. And money."

A small crackling flame began to leap up from the kindling and before long the two cut logs had begun to blacken. Allison leaned up against the fireplace on one side and folded her arms while she watched the fire and Jocelyn's face. "I'd have guessed that you were the sort who needed to fight. You're certainly a rare find... especially here." Allison's voice betrayed a hint of something that sounded like fondness.

"It's Watson, by the way. Eh..." She hesitated, as though the words were stuck in her throat. "You may call me Sarah, if you'd like. It's my name. My given name, that is. Sarah Allison Watson, youngest of three. Sometimes I forget that. I go by Allison to sort of... set my work apart from my personal life. It would seem too strong to say that my friends call me Sarah..."

She set her green eyes on Jocelyn again. The small fire cast flickering shadows across the floor, and with the apartment lights mostly off Allison was only just lit enough to make out the look on her face. It was different. She remained composed and still while her eyes searched Jocelyn. "You and I are going to be more than friends, I think. Something more significant than that." She said softly. "You are a rare find, Jocelyn. I'm... sorry that I can be rather severe."

As quickly as the mood came, she dismissed it. She returned to her chair and drained the rest of her glass of wine and poured another. "Now drink up, the least you could do is drink." She said in her usual stern, velvety tone.

"oooh..." Jocelyn said as she listened to Allison's mild explanation. It made her think if maybe Jocelyn needed a scale as well. She didn't know really. Maybe she didn't. She liked to think she was this deep, complex person but she might have just been a brat who needed to fulfill some sort of primal and mundane urges. Jocelyn looked up at Allison and smiled. "Heh... I've been kind of been fighting my whole life. My father was nice enough to marry an Australian woman and still be hypocritical enough to instill a sense of Chinese pride in me. Pretty ripper when you're sent to a very strict Chinese school. Didn't care very much for the fact that I was part Aussie. That didn't last too long but strangely enough when I went to a an Australian school they weren't too much of a fan of my Chinese side..."

Jocelyn's tone was cynical as she looked at Allison. "Well, I guess I can thank my pop for that strict military discipline, it taught me not to take any shite." Jocelyn laughed suddenly. "Ha! I feel like I'm back in school my first few days I got beat up but eventually I fought back and after a while I was the bully." She grinned up at Allison but then paused. "Rare find?" She asked. "Doesn't every cunt here like to throw down?" She questioned.

She then felt Allison's eyes on her. "Sarah? Right then.." She muttered and let out a smaller smile that faded into a look of confusion and desire when Allison spoke her words. "Oh.. Y-yes, I hope so!" She said a little too eagerly and then cleared her throat, turning her head when Allison suddenly apologized. "Tch. It's fine, it's not like it even got to me or anything." She said trying to cover up with some bravado.

Jocelyn then nodded and took some more wine, sipping it quickly before holding back for a moment and sipping another deeper drink. "This is good..." She paused and looked down and then looked at Allison. "S-Sarah." She then smiled and looked at Allison. It was still weird but she took the glass and gulped down the rest of the wine pretty quickly. She didn't know why but she was starting to feel pretty good. Maybe this atmosphere was really relaxing her more than she thought it would.

"Cette vin de Bourgogne is not the most expensive variety money can buy, nor is it the most expensive on my wine rack. The grapes weren't grown and harvested from Domaine de la RomanÃe-Conti, or any of the more prestigious estates... But it's a remarkable wine. People with the means to gather the most expensive and decadent things from the world for their own indulgence often only want the things that others cannot have. They lack taste. This is a wine that anyone would overlook, completely unheralded, but I have sampled the finest of the world and this particular bottle has not left me wanting." Allison said softly, her French spoken with an immaculate, smooth French accent. "I thought you would like it."

She refreshed each of their glasses and folded her legs, and appeared for a moment to be in thought. "Would you like to see the rest of the place? A tour. It's not a terribly large place, but there are several points of interest." She asked while swirling her new glass of wine. She closed her eyes while she sniffed the bouquet and looked over at Jocelyn.

Jocelyn listened to what Allison said about the wine. She had to admit that te interest she took was feigned. She didn't care what it was that she was drinking as long as it tasted good and gave her a nice buzz. Which, now that she was on to her third glass, was doing quite nicely. She was feeling a little more giddy and a little more loose. "Right. It's pretty good. I usually just drank beer with my mates but um.. I haven't really had anything since moving to Japan.

Jocelyn stood up suddenly. "Yes, yes." She said nodding and smiling. "That would be pretty cool." It wouldn't be that cool but getting to be around Allison more and see what ind of world she lived in was something she wanted. Though, it could be the alcohol starting to talk, she really probably could care less about Allison's stupid crap.

"Oh, brilliant." Allison said and stood from her chair. She placed her wine glass back on the table and turned to lead Jocelyn from the fireplace, on the left side of the expansive living area, to the other side. With her back to Jocelyn, she smiled faintly. She didn't need to worry too much about keeping Jocelyn under control. It was so easy to lure her back in line, even if it took a bit of rather convincing, but utterly insincere, sentimentality.

The other side of the very wide room had a pair of hand-carved wooden chairs on either side of a heavy wooden table that ran parallel to the wall. On one side of it was a collection of three candles, artfully arranged in a black candelabra of anonymous ethnic origin. The other side of the table held a pair of small statuettes, about a foot high each, depicting an angel-winged woman embracing a young woman. Both figures were nude, covered only by the angelic figures wings.

Above the table, on one side, was a painting of an elegant house on a hill at dusk. The house obviously would've belonged to someone of immense means, and the scene evoked a sort of peace, as though everything were in the right place, until closer inspection reveals the subtle flames just beginning to crawl from inside the windows of the first floor.

Adjacent to the painting on the wall was hung a long knife with a carved bone handle.

"I shan't bore you with much talk about my antiquities, but this one I think would interest you. I got this knife while traveling the countryside in England. It came from a small town, the only commercial enterprise was a general store and a pub. Petrol meant a trip to the next town over, for those who had any use for it.

"In the town lived a man who was an excellent gambler, preferred poker, and like any gambler he had earned the ire of many of the poker-playing townsfolk. This knife belonged to a man with a slow temper, a well-spoken man, who lost countless pounds to the gambler before he was sufficiently convinced that he was being cheated. So the well-spoken man took this knife, almost comical to look at with it's unusual size and shape, and followed the gambler to the streets. The gambler was never drunk, so once the man's intentions were clear he risked the gambler getting away. Also, this knife is not sharp, it never was. It was made as a decorative piece for a tasteless peasant's wall. Killing the man must've taken a great deal of time and... passion.

"I like to think that the man didn't choose to simply shoot the man, or use a more appropriate blade, because he was very well aware of the art he was creating. He wanted to know that he could do it, show the gambling man the strength of his will... and also, he took this useless, ugly piece and made it extraordinary. You see? This trash was made into art by it's wielder, and without any apparent change to the object itself. We should all be so lucky."

Allison paused for a moment to admire the knife and reached up with a finger to feel it's dull tip. She smiled, and then turned sharply to face Jocelyn. "Your encounter with the woman in the lot. Describe it to me. You've had a prior altercation with her, no doubt. How did it feel to do what you did? How do you feel now?" She asked, and began walking in slow, measured steps out of the living area and around the corner to a short hallway that ran out from in between the living area and the dining room.

Jocelyn followed behind Allison like a good little puppy, boredly looking at all the junk in Allison's house. Like she could ever care about any of this shit, but she was happy to indulge the old bat for now. Though she wondered if these things were really important to falling inline with the kind of things Allison had proselytized about earlier. It wasn't until Allison got to the knife and told her story. It was interesting and the Chistalian was skeptic about it. However, she still looked upon it with genuine fascination and to Allison as well.

"Bloody hell." She said and looked at Allison. "How did you even know about it? How did you get it?" She said the questions in rapid succession. She thought about the scene in her head. If Jocelyn was going to murder someone, she'd probably do it like that. But she certainly didn't have the kind of patience to wait around like the guy in the story did. She tilted her head. "I'd just hope a spoon was the closest thing to me..." She muttered almost absent mindedly.

Jocelyn looked at Allison. "Yeah... I think I understand." She said grinning a bit as she took a sip from her wine. When Allison questioned her about her assault on Rika. Jocelyn grinned wider. "It felt good. It wasn't satisfying though. I wasn't finished with her." She flashed Allison a glare. "I owed her one anyway, she wasn't just some random tart walking in the street." Jocelyn gripped her fist tightly. "She was the reason I lost my fight with that Gatt bitch! I was kicking that cunt's arse until she showed up! Why did you stop me?" Jocelyn asked, her tone suddenly becoming gritty as she narrowed her eyes at Allison. "What? Was I supposed to look like a damn priss while I was beating her up!?"

Jocelyn took a deep swig from her wine glass and let out a heavy 'ahhh'. She licked her lips and brought up her other hand, still keeping a glare on Allison. With her free hand she jabbed a finger into Allison's breast. "So.. So what would YOU have done, Sarah?" She barked angrily. Jocelyn then grinned. "Ha! You know... you talk about lifting me up, shaping me into something or... whatever... but you know what I want, Sarah?" Jocelyn leaned into Allison so she was almost leaning against the woman and turned to whisper into Allison's ear.

"I wanna bring you down. I want you to have those looks that I have. I want to see you act like a snarling beast. Your fucking attitude..."

Jocelyn pulled away and looked at Allison with a glazed look. She finished off her third glass and let her hand drop to the ground. "Fuck... I hate you..." She said almost somberly as her head drooped.