Seven Days for Evil's Sake

Cassie overslept again. This time, though, it was because she'd been up all night, and she was very, very tired. She finally dragged herself out of bed with barely enough time to shower and get ready to go meet Mamouru at the gym.

It was a big day, they were going to work on practical things for her matches. She was going to learn how to fight like a bad girl, and while she had her reservations about it, she was excited. There was no harm in learning to act like a bad girl as long as she wasn't one really. She put on a pair of gym shorts and a tank top, added a warm up jacket, slung a backpack over her shoulders, and started the jog to the AFW gym.

The day before was awesome. They went to the zoo and Cassie spent time being a bear at the bear pen, and scurrying off from one animal to the next. She sort of felt bad for the zoo animals, though. The bears in Canada looked happier, probably because whenever you saw them there were going through your garbage. She wished there was a moose, but alas, no moose.

The movie was funny. It was in Japanese, and she even managed to understand some of it but still spent half the movie asking Mamoru what people were saying. She spent the scary parts whispering "This is so dumb, it's just a dumb lizard-thing, this is dumb." But she couldn't help nearly jumping out of her seat several times. She buried her face in Mamouru's shoulder to hide her eyes in a particularly gory part.

If today was as fun as yesterday, than this was going to be a good week.

She walked into the gym and started looking around for Mamouru. There were enough other girls there that she felt a twinge of apprehension about the day's training... She felt silly. The other girls probably didn't ever need to work on this sort of thing. But then, they probably needed a lot of work on the things Cassie was already good at.

She pulled a towel out of her backpack and dabbed some sweat off her face, found an open spot on the mats to drop her stuff, and peeled off her jacket. She didn't know if Mamouru was there yet, though she could've imagine that he wouldn't be... She had arrived a little bit late. If he was there, he'd find her soon enough, and she needed to do some stretching and warming up before they did anything anyway. She sat down on the mats and began slowly easing into her stretches. She was very flexible, and it always felt so good to limber up until her legs felt like rubber.

Mamouru decided to search around a bit once it got a while past the time he said to meet up. It didn't take too long before he came upon Cassie, stretching andwarmign up. He smiled, he was a distance away and he cfound himself looking her over, almost staring at herwhile she stretched. There was a pleasant smile on his face until he suddenly felt something stir inside of him. He shook his head and let out a small cough to clear his throat. After doing a long circle around the ring, he came up to Cassie and stood in front of her so she could see him easily.

"Cassie-san." He said with a bow. "Hello!" He smiled cheerfully at her. "I'm glad to see you getting warmed up. When you're ready, finish up and head into the ring, ok? For now there's a few things we can do that doesn't require too much of you and I'd like to point those out first."

Cassie jumped to her feet. "Mamouru-san, hi!" She said cheerfully and bowed to him. A moment passed in which she just looked at him and didn't know what to say, she tried patching over the conspicuous space with a smile that was both warm and nervous.

"Oh!" She suddenly realized that Mamouru had kept talking after hello. "I'm ready now, I was pretty much done. I'm all warm and limber and stuff." She paused again, with the same odd, unsure smile, and then took off for the ring. She climbed up onto the ring apron and slipped under the middle rope.

"Ready!" She chirped, but then she corrected herself. She tried to relax, hold her head up a little, and erase the smile from her face. "I mean, whenever you're ready. Uh... Hurry up, or... something."

Learning to be a heel was going to be really tough. She'd need to work from a script or something, until she was comfortable enough to improvise.

Mamouru strolled over to the ring a little more casually, smiling at Cassie's hyperness. He stepped up into the ring using the chrome steps and then got to the center of te ring. He looked Cassie over and tilted his head. "Now." He said. there are a few legal moves that you can do to increase your success as a heel. One of them is pretty easy. If you're in a tight situation or even when you're doing good. Especially when you're doing good, a demoralizing slap to the face is something that should be in any heel's arsenal. It says. "I'm not worried about you and all I need is the flat of my hand to put a stop to you!"

Mamouru leaned forward, extending his cheek out to her. "So." He said pointing at it. "Get mean and give me your best slap in the face. Then laugh at me afterward. Enjoy the fact that you are slapping me!" He ten gave Cassie a soft smile. "And don't worry about me, I've been slapped in the face pleeeeenty of times. I'm sure anything you could manage wouldn't be have as painful as anything I've had before."

Cassie's eyes grew big and her eyebrows lifted nervously. "You want me to what?" She asked. She wasn't sure if she could do that. Why would she want to slap Mamouru? He smelled nice.

Timidly, she slunk over to him and stood in front of him. She took a breath and tried to get over the idea of slapping him, but it wasn't easy. She lifted a hand and delivered the gentlest, weakest, most careful slap in the history of the world. It didn't even make a sound.

"There, I did it." She said, and shifted from foot to foot. That wouldn't do. Not at all. What if she was in a match, and she had to do something or else get rolled over by her opponent. Like in the match with Nikolette...she had no fond memories of that match. It was just so frustrating, like everything she had trained to do was worthless against her because she was big. Nikolette didn't hold back in that match. When she had a shot at Cassie, she took it, and she paid for it.

Cassie wished she could have a rematch with her. Things would be different the second time around. She remembered how it felt to be beaten down, on the mat, a loser, beaten so easily. What did it take, three moves for Nikolette to end her night? She was the laughing stock of the AFW.

She looked back at Mamouru and decided to try again. She needed to do this to make sure she didn't just drop losses to people so easily. She was better than that. She'd already proved she was better than Mamouru.

Something changed in her face, and suddenly she felt frustrated with Mamouru, though she wasn't sure why. She reached back with her hand and threw her whole body into a huge slap across Mamouru's cheek that was heard over all the other noise in the gym. It also stung her palm like crazy. She resisted for a moment, trying to look tough, but eventually shook her hand and looked at it. It was red.

"H-how was that?" She asked, quiet as a mouse.

Mamouru rolled his eyes as the first slap hit him. HE opened his mouth to say something when he saw Cassie look deep inthought. He closed his mouth and waited again, watching her facial features with interest. He smiled as he saw the girl's whee;s spinning and then suddenly she burst forward and launched a slap at him.

He was shocked by the loudness of it and it stung his face quite thoroughly. He let out a grunt and fell to one knee, panting softly as he touched his face which had a big read mark on it.

Mamouru winced and looked up at Cassie. he smiled brightly. "Excellent, Cassie-san!" He exclaimed. "If you have that during a match, you can stop girl's momentum or break her spirit." He stopped to rub his cheek again and grimaced before taking Cassie's hand and bringing her over to the ropes.

"Ok now." He said. "This is probably the easiest thing for you personally to do." He began. "Lock my up in your favorite submission hold, but make sure I can reach out and grab the ropes still, ok? What I want you to do is try and make me submit, I'll grab the ropes and then count to four. Don't break the hold until I get to four though, no matter what, alright?"

"Well, okay..." Cassie said. She went through her list of favorite submissions and immediately crossed off her flying armbar, because she could actually injure his arm, and her gogoplata, because he'd never really be able to reach the ropes, and finally settled on a good old fashioned sleeper hold. She would never get used to calling it that.

She swung around Mamouru and leapt up onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and hooking her feet on the insides of his thighs. She snaked an arm around under his chin, positioning the elbow in the middle so that she would put pressure on both sides of his neck, clasped her hands together, and took a breath. She didn't mind chokes so much, although if he wasn't really careful he could easily be out before he reached the count of four. Like when Cassie had her tonsils removed and they put her under and had her count back from 100, and she made it to 97 before she was unconscious.

"Okay." She squeezed. No one ever really expected her grip to be so strong, but it was as much due to technique and leverage as it was to her well practiced, well conditioned, grappler's muscles, such that they were.

WHen MAmouru felt Cassie hop up against him, he blushed a bit. When she wrapped an arm around her throat, he continued getting even redder for different reasons. She cut the oxygen to his brain pretty well and he stumbled forward, trying to get enough momentum to get to the ropes. He grabbed onto them and fell to his knees.

"R-Rope B-break..." He managed, barely audible as his voice sounded gagged. He weakly lifted up his hands and then began to count with his fingers. One. Two. Three. At three his hand fell limp and he slumped forward against the ropes so his chest rested against the middle rope and his arms hung limply at his sides.

"Oh, my." Cassie said softly. She slid off of Mamouru and slipped her arms under his and pulled him off of the ropes. She gently laid him down on the mat and knelt down next to him.

It didn't bother her very much that she'd sort of accidentally choked him out. She'd been around chokes since she could walk, and it happened sometimes. He'd come around in a second anyway.

She gave him a little pat on the cheek and rubbed his upper chest with her palm. At the first sign of recovery, she leaned over him.

"Um... how was that?" She asked. That probably wasn't what he was looking for...

Mamouru woke up afew seconds later, sitting up and coughing a bit. He looked up at Cassie and gave weak smile. Mamouru stood up, leaning his hand against Cassie's shoulder for the moment. "Excellent, Cassie-san." He walked back to the center of the ring. He then smiled wryly at Cassie. "Did you drag me to the center of the ring by my hair though?"

He took a moment and lauged. "So, Cassie-San, Do you think you're willing to step it up even more?" He asked. "Or maybe we should try escaping a hold as a heel?"