Easing The Tension

Taylor laughed bitterly. "Holy shit, this is pathetic!" She exclaimed. "I'm not going to fight you for Johnny, Paper Weight. Johnny's a big boy, he can make up his own mind." She said, grimly resolved to accept whatever Johnny decided, though part of her knew he already had. It was a little hard to watch Talia going off like this, but also Talia was trying to piss Taylor off, something Taylor herself was no stranger to. It was almost impressive to see how quickly Talia turned on her.

She put a hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. "So, what, am I supposed to snap and take a swing at you because you're texting my boyfriend? Well, oh em gee, look how upset I am. Or maybe I can grab your phone and throw it on the floor and break it, then you'd be screwed, right? No more phone numbers for you. Well I don't know how they do things back at your little house on the prairie, but I'm not going to take a swing at you, because you're not worth it. Why would I be worried about some moderately attractive subbie-girl? Did you see how fast Johnny forgot all about you? Talk all the trash you want, loser, the only person you're going to piss off is you."

Just to put it over the top, Taylor shoved Talia's shoulder with one hand, and then when she was distracted with being angry and all "don't touch me", Taylor's other hand darted out and snatched her phone away. She hurled it against the wall and it shattered.

"Oops." She said with the most irritatingly smug look she could muster.

Talia had just been typing gibberish on her phone, not intending to send anything. She was new to trying to make someone angry. Before she only wanted people to like her, she thought people who got angry over pretty much anything were just immature and had no self control. But now she didn't care. When Taylor shoved her once more, she turned to shove back but the girl had grabbed her cell phone. Before she could reach to grab it back, she threw it against the wall. Without even a moment of thought, Talia drove her forehead into Taylor's smug face. She didn't even tilt her head down before doing the action as an actual headbutt was supposed to be executed. She was so angry that she didn't care how much the headbutt would hurt herself as well. "You're right, it did piss me off.."

If it hit Taylor, the angry Talia would grab her by the shoulders and try to drill her knee into the girl's ribs. "Shut up!" she'd yell at the top of her lungs. Suddenly the idea of a match in a ring seemed pointless when Talia could do even more damage outside of it. All out of insults, Talia just repeated her words, "Shut up!" as she continued to try and knee Taylor in the ribs. For once, there was no hesitation in her actions. She was acting purely in impulse at this point.

As a veteran trash-talker, Taylor knew to always have a plan for the inevitable snap. What good was pissing someone off if you weren't prepared for when they take that first shot? She naturally assumed that Talia would go after her ribs, since she was well aware of how hurt she was.

The headbutt came as a bit of a surprise, and while Taylor instinctively protected her midsection with her arms, Talia's forehead bashed into the side of Taylor's nose and staggered her back. She was seeing stars, and brought one hand up to her hurt face while Talia immediately followed up. The first knee she absorbed with her forearms, but it still stung her ribs. The second knee hurt worse, and she let out a growl from a combination of anger, pain, and adrenaline.

Enough getting beat on by this punk ass loser, when the third knee strike was in the air, Taylor stepped behind Talia's standing leg and drove forward to trip her up and come crashing down on top of her. Instantly she went to straddle her and press herself down flat against her, with one arm tucked against her side and the other reaching for a hold on Talia's hair.

"That's not how you do it."

Pleasure wouldn't have been the proper word when describing Talia's feeling when Taylor groaned in pain from her knee shot. Satisfaction maybe? Regardless, Talia then followed up with a third knee blow. This time, though, one of Taylor's feet stepped out behind her standing leg. Unable to step back, Talia tripped backwards as Taylor then pushed forward and landed on her. "Ack!" Talia groaned as Taylor fell on top of her. She straddled her, but Talia managed to keep both of her hands free. Feeling Taylor grab ahold of her hair, the girl responded by continuing to throw punches at Taylor's ribs. She was guarding one side with her arm but the other side was undefended, and Talia intended to take advantage of every weakness she could. It was really all she could do.

She had wanted to pull right back on the other girl's freshly died black hair but couldn't reach it. "Get off me!" she yelled at the larger girl.

Taylor made small pained noises with every punch that landed on her ribs. They all hurt so much more than they should've, to the point where Taylor was afraid that she would re-injure her. It certainly wouldn't be hard to do, and Talia was out of control. Taylor felt a twinge of that old feeling, the fear of being helpless when someone else wants to hurt you, but she didn't panic. Not exactly.

She roughly seized Talia by the hair with both hands, pulled her head up a few inches off the floor, and reared back before fiercely bashing the crest of her forehead down into the girl's face. That's how you fucking headbutt someone.

"STOP!" She screamed in Talia's face. "For real, just stop!" She pushed back off of Talia and sat down by her legs. She hugged her aching ribs with both arms while she grimaced in pain. She knew that if Talia kept after her, she could take her. This little newbie wasn't taking her out. She knew that, but... she really hoped Talia didn't come after her again.

Talia stopped throwing punches as Taylor lifted her up from her hair. She cringed from the sharp pains in her scalp. Why was it always the hair? But Talia soon learned the answer. She saw Taylor rear back and knew she was about to headbutt her. She tried to squirm free but couldn't. All she managed to do was slightly reposition her face before the impact. It wasn't exactly a better position either. Taylor's forehead smashed straight into the center of her face and nose. "Unh!" the girl groaned in pain. Her hands rushed to cover her face as Taylor got off of her. She tried to breath twice only to not be able to.

Taylor had demanded she stop. Even though she had done some damage to her, Talia, at least for now, was too occupied with her face to keep up the adrenaline. She lifted her right hand up and looked at it. Blood. With her left hand she tightly held her nose to stop the bleeding as best she could. She wasn't sure if Taylor had intended to hit her directly in the nose or not, but the mere fact that she had to think about it showed that she had calmed down enough to at least contemplate. Breathing heavily through her mouth, Talia rolled to her butt in the direction opposite of Taylor. Despite the pause, she did not say anything to the girl at first. Enough blood had escaped that it covered her mouth and several drops landed on her brand new halter top. Talia glared at Taylor and said, "Why bother stopping?"

"Why?" Taylor echoed incredulously. "Think about what you're doing! What , are you gonna put me back in the hospital so you can make time with my boyfriend? Fuck up my career some more? My life? You know perfectly goddamn well that I would fuck you up in a fair fight, just like you know I'm injured!"

Taylor just wanted to flop on her back and quit. It never stopped. It never ended. There was always someone to fight, someone to worry about, something to be afraid of. Taylor was so weary of it all after spending weeks in her apartment totally alone with the pain in her ribs as a constant reminder of her failure in the ring, and that she could never count on her opponents to stop. If she couldn't trust the professionals, how could she even think about trusting someone outside the ring? There were no rules in street fights, and no ref, no security to break them up if they got out of hand. It turned her stomach.

But she couldn't give in. It wasn't in her. She cautiously pushed herself back up to her feet while in obvious pain, never taking her deep blue eyes off of Talia. "I thought you were like, a nice, normal girl." She said, the disappointment in her tone unmistakable. "But you bitches are all the same. Not for nothin', but it means something coming from me."

Taylor was the last person to be talking sense into anyone. She was impulsive and short tempered, and she used to have Akashi to help keep her in line. Now Akashi was gone... but yet there she was, trying to get Talia to calm down and think.

"I know what it's like, man." She said without thinking, as she just let her mouth go. "You get here and there's all the pressure and none of your friends around... A girl like you, though, man, it must be so easy for you to get along with people. I can't even blame you for flipping out, I know it's me. I could make Ghandi lose his shit if I had five minutes with him." She mused. "How come you're so worried, though?" She asked. She couldn't help but be jealous of her, and she wasn't sure why.

The way Taylor explained what could happen made Talia's glare turn into a mere stare. She didn't have a plan, and certainly hadn't thought the consequences through. And it was true, Taylor would have the upper hand if she wasn't injured. Talia had witnessed the girl get injured on television, and seen the damage Brittany had done even after the match had ended. Taylor hadn't competed since that day. The thought of injuring her like that suddenly made Talia feel guilty. She couldn't say she meant no harm, but she certainly never planned on injuring Taylor. Then again, she hadn't planned anything, so she was suddenly very glad Taylor had headbutted her in the face to stop her. She struggled to her feet, expecting to just walk away and forget everything that had happened.

But something Taylor said set her off again. It wasn't anything physical, but it certainly struck the girl hard. "How do you know what it's like?" Talia asked rhetorically. "You have friends, you have support, you have had success." Talia frowned and turned away. "I haven't. I've been competing for a month now and I still have no one to talk to, to share a laugh with, or anything. I have no good experiences, and I have no one to help me along the way." Talia pointed her bloody right hand at Taylor. "You are part of a tag team with the ex-Friction world champ, you have the support of a loving boyfriend," Talia suddenly rolled her eyes as she diverged from her point. "And don't give me any shit about you losing him or you making a mistake or something. I saw the look in his eyes when you jumped into his arms. He never once looked at me that way." It was the reason that she had left so suddenly when Taylor and Johnny reunited. She knew Johnny cared for her greatly, and she just couldn't get involved any further knowing that. The girl sighed, trying to get her mind back on the topic at hand. "...and you have won plenty of matches, including a title." Admittedly, she knew Taylor had lost at least one of these things, but that was beyond her point.

"You bitch about how I could possibly fuck up your life when at least you have something to lose. I don't." Talia began to tear up a little bit, and not because of her potentially broken nose. "People boast sometimes about having nothing to lose. Well they really don't know what it's like to have nothing. They don't know what it's like to not have a reason to wake up every morning, to not know what to say about yourself when looking in the mirror, and to go to sleep knowing if you vanished overnight no one would even notice." Talia was clearly getting upset at her own words. Her inhibitions had been dropped since she snapped, and now it seemed like this confession was more directed at herself than Taylor. She released her left hand's grip on her nose. Blood flowed down to her mouth, and began to rapidly trickle off her chin to the floor. Talia didn't even seem to care. "You know when you have nothing left, or nothing to lose. And I know you have plenty to be happy for. Even if it is only in the form of happy memories. Be grateful for those.."

Taylor folded her arms and listened while Talia unloaded on her. She was surprised to find that the girl was in such rough shape. From their initial meeting, Taylor had her pegged as someone else. She imagined Talia as the girl no one ever said anything bad about, who got along with everybody and never had to worry about people making her suffer just for the fun of it.. But her story was as same old as it gets, and Taylor found it somewhat difficult to sympathize partly because she knew she could sympathize so well.

She raised an eyebrow and her face tightened. Now she was just getting annoying.

"Oh, my, GOD, dude! Shut up!" She shouted. "Cry me a fuckin' river, why don't ya? You wanna compare lives and see whose is worse? Well, I don't, my life is none of your business!" She winced, as the exertion of raising her voice hurt her freshly bruised ribs.

"You don't know a goddamn thing about me." She snarled. "You've seen me on TV, so you think of course everyone loves me and I've got all these great people around to love and support me." She said, imitating Talia's voice. "I get that you're pissed of that you're a loser and you're all alone, but dude, don't make that my problem. If you want to stop losing, stop acting like a loser, and if you don't want to be alone, maybe don't go all fucking psycho killer on me when I try to do something nice for you."

The thing that was weird was that Taylor found herself feeling more like an adult lately. She was experienced, had some degree of success, and a certain level of comfort with her surroundings and with herself. It was a new thing that she could talk to someone else as if she were the one who had it together. Not that she was doing that now, but it felt weird to scold someone else for their bad behavior.

Admittedly, part of that was her feelings being hurt when Talia turned out to not like her, but she didn't think about that.

The girl took a moment to look around at her surroundings. This wasn't exactly an ideal place to be arguing, not that any place was actually good for that. It was clear, at least to Talia, that she wasn't getting any sympathy from Taylor, at least anymore. She honestly never expected to find any from the fellow American when they first met. After all, she was one of the best wrestlers in Friction while Talia was a nobody. "You're right, why would I want to compare our lives? What was I thinking?" she asked sarcastically. She didn't know much about Taylor's life after all, but she really didn't care anymore at this point. She didn't want to know more about Taylor's life. The girl was exactly what she thought she would be: arrogant, loud-mouthed, and selfish. Even Talia was upset at how naive she had been. What good could possibly have come from spending time with this girl?

"Nice?" Talia asked loudly. "I've been nice my whole life and it has gotten me nowhere. Am I then supposed to just accept your act of mock kindness with a smile?" She took a few steps toward Taylor. "Or maybe I'll just take your advice and stop acting like a loser!" With those words, she suddenly charged forward at Taylor, trying to tackle her back to the ground with a quick spear. Something had clicked in Talia's head. She was barely thinking at all. She had heard Taylor's words and even responded to them, but she really hadn't accepted or understood any of them. "And not stop when someone tells me to stop! And be an ass when someone asks me to be nice!" Talia proceeded to scream as she would try to rain blows down at Taylor's head.