Love and Grace

"Ohmigosh!" Cassie exclaimed, and performed a fitful, funny little dance jerking her arms back and forth over her head. "Awesome, awesome, awesome! I'm so glad I could help! Definitely you can find me whenever you need to." Spending most of her youth in her dad's gym, she'd learned to make herself useful in whatever ways she could. She'd learned a thing or two about massage, but all of her practice was on much larger, muscular men.

"Well..." Cassie smiled, and looked off at the ceiling while she stood up. "Do you think you could take me down? My specialty is ground fighting, submissions and wrestling and stuff. I'm not really good at anything else, though... But you're like me! You're my size, so you have to learn moves that work on bigger, stronger opponents if you want to compete. Right?"

Cassie slid one foot slightly back, taking just enough of a stance that she could react, without making it obvious that she was. "Go ahead, try to take me down." She said, holding in a smile. Of course she had every intention of countering and putting Talia on her back, but maybe she'd be pleasantly surprised and the girl would be a wizard on the ground. By Cassie's experience with AFW girls, though... probably not.

Talia was unsure if she could take Cass down. Nevertheless, it was worth a short. There weren't many friendly training opportunities out there, and she needed all the help she could get. The girl got to her feet and stood opposite of Cass. "I can try, I did manage to take someone down the other day." They hadn't seen her coming, it was rather uncalled for in hindsight. But she had taken her down. Fortunately, she hadn't run into Taylor quite yet, but she knew it was inevitable. But those were thoughts for another time. Besides, this was Talia's only time to train with someone who was actually her size.

"Alright...here I go." Talia stared for a few seconds, she didn't want to be blaringly obvious when she was going to try and takedown Cass as that would defeat the purpose. So she paced slowly back and forth while watching her. When she felt Cass may (or may not) be lightly letting her guard down, Talia would sprint at her and aim her shoulder around the girl's abdomen. She would throw her weight into the maneuver.

Cassie's eyes noticeably changed as Talia began to pace around her. Her face became expressionless, and her eyes were fixed on Talia but focusing on nothing in particular. She bent her knees and leaned down, getting low in anticipation of Talia's shot.

When it came, Cassie was a little surprised that Talia would dive at her that way, so obviously over-committing to it. Sure, it'd do a lot of damage for a strong girl who could cleanly land it, but... it wasn't Cassie's style. Without thinking, Cassie immediately hooked her arms up in front of her like a fork lift and she sprawled her legs back while Talia's shoulders collided with her arms. She hooked her arms under Talia's and twisted to the side, unbalancing the new girl and letting her momentum take her stumbling past Cassie.

Cassie dropped down and scissored her legs around Talia's knees, and the rolled to one side to collapse her down to the mat. Instantly, she had one of Talia's feet in her hands, ready to apply an ankle lock.

She giggled. "Sorry. That was good! But do you see how you shouldn't have been so aggressive at first, without knowing what I can do?"

Talia dove at Cass and found herself stumbling forward and to the mat by the girl's quickness. She fell face forward to the mat but stuck out her arms to cushion her landing. She wasn't use to aiming at nimble wrestlers like Cass. It became apparent why the girl had already won at least one match. "I'm not really good at reading people," Talia explained. "I never really had any chances to learn what my opponents could do before it was too late." It was an excuse, but still Talia knew she needed to know better. Then again, diving at an opponent with an intent to tackle wasn't her specialty.

The girl rolled over to her back and looked up at Cass. Her ankle was still in Cass's grasp though she hoped it wasn't hard to enough to twist when she rolled. "What's it like here?" she suddenly asked somewhat vaguely. The usual questions that accompanied a newish member of the club hadn't really been answered by others. If anyone would give Talia an honest explanation, it was this nice and bubbly girl Cass. "The people...do they at least try to be as friendly as you?"

"What's it like?" Cassie echoed, somewhat perplexed by the question.

She put Talia's ankle down and sat up. "Um... It's really great. Mostly. Most of the other girls are really awesome, but they aren't very friendly, not usually. But that's okay. I just try to treat people the way I want to be treated, and everything works out. Sort of." She tilted her head to the side and found she just couldn't paint as rosy a picture of the place as she wanted to. "I guess I'm just not quite sure what to say, what do you want to know aboot?"

She furrowed her brow as she kept thinking about Talia's question. "Were people not so nice in Tension? I had kind of a Tension match, just for fun, really. It was on Valentines day, and I was teamed with my best friend and we wrestled her boyfriend and his brother, and afterward I hung out with the brother and he was really nice. Ya know, mostly..."

A match on Valentine's day with a best friend, their boyfriend, and a friendly brother? That almost seemed like a day off by concept. Talia's matches had been nowhere near as pleasant sounding as Cass's was. "Well...some are cool but they aren't really nice." She had met a few individuals who were chivalrous enough. They hadn't held any punches when fighting her, not that they should have, but two had helped her out of the ring when she wasn't able to do so under her own power. Her thighs were still hurting from some of those matches but it wasn't as bad as her back. She still remembered when she injured that.

"Some...go out of their way to make you hurt. In fact, my first match was against someone who just...just kept beating me up even after he had won.." She reached for her back. "That was when I hurt this...he almost tore me in half against the ropes. I could barely stand through the rest of the match." Talia shuddered at the thought of the other thing her opponent had done to her but didn't want to tell Cass what it was. Frankly, she still wasn't comfortable in sharing that information. "But it doesn't look like people here are like that. I mean...they seem serious but no one actually wants to injure others...right?"

Cassie moved from being cross-legged to a more upright kneeling position with her hands on her knees. "Of course n-" she started to dismiss the notion, but stopped short. It would be an outright lie to say that no one was in Friction just to hurt people. Her head sagged and she rubbed the back of her neck.

"Well, a-actually..." She stammered. "There are a lot of people around who just want to be mean to everyone. My friend, the one I tagged with, she got hurt in a match recently with her real tag partner, and then she had a match while she was still hurt and the other girl..." Cassie started getting choked up thinking about it. She was visibly upset by the subject. "Sh-she... she hurt her a lot worse. On purpose. She kept hitting her and hitting her and hurt her really bad, and she was in the hospital, and then when she got out her own friend fought with her and then this other girl attacked her, just to be mean." She started getting angry thinking about it, and her face reddened. "She needs to rest and heal, but she won't, and people keep trying to hurt her worse and re-injure her. It could change her career!" She said angrily.

She looked away and took a breath. Her palms were all sweaty, and she rubbed the sweat off on her legs. "Well, I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen anymore. She won't let herself just take it easy and avoid contact, so I'm going to watch out for her. It's the very best thing I can do while I'm here." She said, and stared at the floor for a second before looking up at Talia with a little smile.

"I hope people are a lot nicer to you, though."

Talia couldn't help but think about the girl Cass was talking about. It must have been painful to feel helpless when trying to look out for a friend. In a career where getting injured was part of the job, there was always the threat of getting hurt too much. She never actually thought about this for herself, but she did always fear it happening to someone else such as her brother. Still, Cass's story sounded familiar, and Talia wasn't entirely sure why just yet. "That's terrible..." she said as Cass went along with the story. It did make her feel a little guilty, knowing that there are others who had it worse than her and her she was complaining.

She watched the girl get physically upset by what was happening. Ironically, it made Talia smile. It showed Cass really did care about this friend she was talking about. It wasn't just survival of the fittest here after all. Some others really did care. "You're a terrific friend to this girl. I hope I find someone like you to look out for me one day." Talia smiled, trying to cheer up Cass. She did hope so for her own sake. Already people had complained that she didn't know when to quit, that she was going to get seriously hurt soon. She ignored them, but at the same time she didn't really care what they thought. The words of a friend, though, would be different. Talia lifted her left leg up backwards and held onto her ankle with her right hand to stretch her quad. "Who is it if I may ask?"

"But... you have found someone like me!" Cassie said. "Me!"

She hopped up to her feet and stretched down with her feet together and legs straight so that her upper body was flat against her knees. When she stood upright again, she grinned at Talia.

"Taylor Parker. Do you know her? With the blue hair?" She said, holding up her hair on either side of her head like pigtails. "It's black now, but I think that's because she's just been really depressed with the injury and everything. She... hasn't been doing very well. I was at home when it happened, in Canada, so I wasn't around to help her, and... I am now, so I'm really trying to... ya know, get her to remember who she is and why she's here. She needs so much help, but she won't ever take it. She doesn't have a good family like I do, and she hasn't ever wanted my help, and I think I was more friends with her back in New York than she was with me, but... I think I'm that way with more than just her." Cassie said. "She deserves to at least have people be nice to her."

She stepped one foot on top of the other awkwardly while she looked blankly at Talia. She didn't know what else to do, she she suddenly shot in on her, getting low and wrapping up Talia's legs, using her leverage to bring her down to the mat. The whole movement was so well-practiced and smoothly executed it almost looked slower than it really was. Certainly not something someone would expect out of an adorable little girl like Cassie.

Talia couldn't help but smile warmly to what Cass had said. It was nice to finally meet someone like her. She was friendly, outgoing, and humble. It was very refreshing. "I guess I have." Talia hoped it would be the start of a long friendship. But then Cass said that name. And all of a sudden the story made perfect sense. And once again, Talia was the villain. Her face sunk, looking as if she had seen a ghost. So much so, that she held the position of holding her leg up for a good while, unsure of what to say. That is, if there was anything to say at all. Cass had said it like she didn't know who the girl who attacked her for no reason was. Still, Talia knew eventually Cass would find out it was her. That thought alone made her feel terrible on the inside.

But before she made up her mind on that matter, Cass reached out and tackled Talia down to the mat. Standing on only one foot made her fall rather quickly. Just like that, she thought Cass knew after all, and that she had deceived Talia from the beginning. After all, she was the one who bumped into her. Was everything she said just an act to lower Talia's guard? She screeched out as she thought this, covering her face with her forearms as she landed. "S-Stop! I'm s-sorry!" she pleaded to Cass. "I didn't mean to, I didn't know it was that bad! It...it just happened!" She tried to curl up in a ball, protecting her head with her arms.