Small World After All

Clyde's day started just the same as any other for the past couple of months. He awoke from his bed in the early afternoon with a hangover that rung in his head bad enough to wake him from his sleep and force him to stay awake, lying down in the bed for a good 45 minutes before he got up and took a cold shower to try and wake himself up without that bitter hangover that loomed over him right now.

He knew he had done exactly what Mercy and Taylor were against and he realized he had made a mistake last night by celebrating his supposed 'Moving Forward' at a little bar in town where one beer quickly turned into about five or six over the course of a two and a half hour stay at the bar where he spent his time talking shit with locals, telling them war stories so to speak and that he was on his way to The Top! Clyde sort of felt he was on his way to the big time now, he didn't know if that was just because of Mercy, he didn't think that was the case, Clyde was just happy, and that gave him enough reason to start getting back to his old rowdy self. He had not been happy in quite some time.

Still, Clyde wasn't able to control his drinking habits too well or remember the number of drinks he had before he stopped, went home, he realized he didn't listen to Mercy like he said he would and was just going to keep drinking, even if he wasn't wallowing over the memory of Heather this time, he knew he wasn't getting any better and as the drinks settled in, Clyde had doubted whether or not he was even good enough for Mercy. He was just a slobby, wreck of a scoundrel redneck with a low IQ, little education and no sense of style. He was out of his league. Mercy would never bring herself down to white trash like him, and she probably liked girls more anyway. What chance did he have? What was the point in trying?

Then Clyde found a letter he had recently received from his Mother, whom he had not spoken to for almost two years.

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"Nobody is Ever Too Good for You..."

His Mother's hand written letter still flashed through Clyde's head. They pushed him further to acknowledge his mistakes, his regrets and his failures but to not lose sight of what he had right in front of him. A New life, New chances and brighter days were his for the taking if he wanted them bad enough. And He did. More than anything.

Getting out of the cold shower and drying himself off, Clyde gathered what little money he had after scoping out some clearance deals in the paper, decided to head to a local mall in Kyoto to get some new, classier threads and a haircut most likely. He wasn't too thrilled about the latter since he liked having long hair but thought it would be for the best in regards to impressing Mercy to be clean cut. He wanted to look as good as possible.

Donning a white T-shirt, denim jacket, blue jeans, worn out brown cowboy boots and his brown leather cowboy hat before heading out the door to walk down the city streets of Tokyo before taking a cab to head towards this mall with a clearance deal on Men's suits today.

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Upon reaching the mall, Clyde gazed at the large building. A Shopping Mall. When was the last time he even came to a place like this? Clyde didn't remember and he supposed it wasn't much of a big deal. He pulled down on the brim of his cowboy hat and began to walk from the parking lot to head into the main entrance, feeling a little lost at first when he got inside and saw all the Japanese text that utterly confused him.

"Crap." He thought, not taking into account that he was a stupid foreigner turned Gaijin and didn't know his way around a place very well that was crowded with so many people and Clyde didn't know where to begin, so he did the only thing he could do and that was window shop. He would walk into the heart of the mall and would look around at every store to see if it was 'That place for Formal Wear'. There was no rush though, he would have to find it eventually and continued looking about and window shopping in the mall to locate the store with the suits on clearance.

Taylor would've been content to spend most of the day in bed. She was 22 years old today, and she just wanted to spend the day with the one person in the world who really wanted to see her. However, an ill-timed PR thing that Aurelia Fortuna had scheduled for her threatened to eat up her day and keep her away from Johnny. It sucked, but Aurelia was cool. She couldn't just blow her off.

Once she managed to drag herself out of bed and shower she got dressed in her gym clothes, black spandex shorts and a snug, baby blue tank top with sneakers and tube socks pulled up to her knees, and was out the door. She drove her little Fiat 500 to the address Aurelia gave her, prepared to deal with the usual Friction fans, and was infinitely confused hen she arrived at a middle school.

With the help of an aging woman stationed in the hallway, she found her way to the gym, which was packed with young Japanese kids in their school uniform gym clothes, a white t-shirt tucked into dark red shorts. She felt stupidly out of place, and like everyone was staring at her from the moment she walked in, which many of them were. She found out that there was a pro baseball player, a soccer player, and a female track star there along with her as part of some school program to encourage athletics in blossoming young kids. She didn't really get the point, exactly, and even as one of the four professional athletes she still felt out of place. Given where she worked and what she did, it seemed like she should've been R-rated.

Nevertheless, the four pros were divided up into pairs and sent off with groups of kids and a couple teachers. The baseball dude and the track chick ended up playing volleyball with kids, while Taylor and the soccer player got stuck playing soccer. Taylor wasn't great with kids, she just wasn't comfortable with them, but she found out very quickly that playing soccer with 13 year olds was... actually really fun.

Before long she'd loosened up, and was racing around the field, showboating and grinning away, playfully competing with the pro who, unlike her, was actually good at soccer. Taylor made daring runs at him to take the ball and every time he deftly maneuvered past her, and she ended up on her back. The kids laughed. She outpaced the them like they were standing still, and once she dove clear over the heads of a group and landed in a roll in a ridiculously showy attempt to take the ball from a kid on the other team. The enemy team. She failed, and the kid was grinning like mad when he left her behind. She compensated by pretending to be injured, because if there was one thing she knew a soccer player had to be good at, it was hamming it up.

Her display ended when the ball came near her again. After a kip-up, she zoomed off after it and received a pass from one of her kids, dribbled sloppily for a brief distance and tried to shoot, only to have the enemy pro whisk the ball away while her big kick hit nothing but air and almost made her fall on her ass.

By the end of the day, she had accomplished absolutely nothing soccer related, but she'd had a great time with the kids. She felt so good that she forgot all about her troubles, the pressures of Friction and of losing matches, her problem with Akashi and Morrigan and Brittany and the Indian chick. She felt good, and she didn't feel like going to meet Johnny at the Tension building yet. Maybe she'd wait until he got home. Instead, she went to the mall.

She had nothing in particular to do, so she just walked around, window shopping and people watching. Even relaxed and in no hurry, she found that her walking pace was still easily double that of the more normal people around her, and she made a conscious effort to slow it down. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that maybe Aurelia had planned out this day better than she thought. She was craftier than she thought.

She rounded a corner, and spotted a face that was all to familiar lately. She approached behind the cowboy.

"Seriously?" She said with a lopsided grin. "If you're stalking me, you should know I am so not cool with that."

Clyde kept his window shopping as he searched for the store he was looking for. It was hard for him not to get distracted by a electronic store he passed that housed tons and tons of bright and flashy video games that caught Clyde's interest and tempted him to go inside and checkout those games. He always liked playing video games as a kid, he remembered Bonnie and him putting a lot of hours into, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II and Super Mario World on a hand-me-down Super Nintendo before they eventually got a hold of a Nintendo 64 that their Mom had bought for them at a yard sale for about $40 bucks, getting the used console and a couple of games like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and a bunch of Pro Wrestling Games called World Tour, Revenge and Attitude. It was really all they could do, Their Mom was a single supporting two kids on her own and buying food and clothing was a lot more important than Video Games, so they had to make do on cheap stuff.

Still, Clyde found it funny. He had a career as a wrestler despite barely watching any wrestling at all growing up because they couldn't afford cable. So the little knowledge and interest that Bonnie and Clyde had in wrestling came from renting the Home Video Releases of Pay-Per-Views and Pro Wrestling Games.

Clyde stared at the store from outside and sighed. When Alessa left she took all her games and consoles with her. Clyde really wanted to try Fight Night. It looked cool. But he didn't have the cash to pay for a console or anything, let alone a laptop, which he wanted but didn't even know how to work.

Keeping his priorties fixated on some more important issues, Clyde began to make his away forward through the mall until he heard a familiar voice creep up from behind him, making him freeze in place as his eyes went wide. "No way In hell...." He thought before swiftly turning around to see... Taylor Parker. Again.

His jaw dropped a bit as he saw Taylor. It was too much of a coincidence that they kept running into each other like this. Not that he wasn't happy to see her. He didn't mind her company as much anymore, but still... This was the 4th time they happened to meet each-other at random. "Pft. And how do I know you ain't just saying that to cover up the chance that You're prolly stalkin' me?" Muttered Clyde with a small smirk.

Taylor just let it slide and turned her attention to what it was Clyde was perusing. Typical boy. Taylor couldn't really talk of course, boys had their video games, and even if Taylor got her clothes from little subversive indie stores and made plenty herself, she couldn't deny that she was at least as fond of clothes and shopping for them as any boy was with... whatever. She never got into video games. In her limited experience, she was terrible at them.

"Know what you need?" She said, looking back at him and his redneck tuxedo. "Clothes. Or like, style. What are you even doing here? Are you by yourself? That's so sad." She joked.

"Money?" Clyde remarked back to Taylor before she finished what she had to say, making Clyde let out an amused huff regarding her words before getting a sly grin to creep across his lips.

"Hahaaa... Oh Ye of lil' faith and knowledge who is CLEARLY stalkin' someone she can't get off her mind..." Said Clyde in cocky manner, joking back to her. "Clyde T. Gastin is here to in fact get some new threads on clearance to pimp his game..." The Texan added shamelessly while giving a confident tug on his jacket before tilting his head at Taylor mischievously.

"What are YOU doing here alone? This isn't even your city... Uh.. Not that I don't mind ya bein' here... You sure it ain't you stalkin' me?" Clyde would add, joking at first before trying to not be misunderstood, only to end it on another joke.

"Nothing, really, just killing some time. I mean I'm here to see Johnny, but he isn't home yet and I don't want to go fish him out of Tension. Tension people are the worst." She teased. "But jeez, dude, aren't you like hot shit in Tension? You don't belong in the clearance racks, man, go get yourself some top shelf shit. Get you looking all GQ and whatever, it might even take the edge off of your whole tragically ugly thing."

She absent mindedly scanned the other people milling around the mall and combed at her bangs with her fingers. "And if I was stalking you, it'd only be to kick your ass and take your stupid belt. Do you still have that? Where is it? Not that I care. There's only one belt I want, and even that isn't, like... what I'm going for." She explained with her hands.

Clyde nodded attentively to Taylor's words regarding why she was here, just killing time before she sees her guy. Ending her explanation with a joke that got Clyde going. "Heh. Just most." He huffed before making a somewhat bitter remark.

He then frowned a bit regarding Taylor's advice on getting himself clothes that wasn't from a clearance rack and rolled his eyes in reaction to her ending comment. "Tragically Ugly, My Ass." He thought before looking to Taylor to explain his situation. "While Clyde T. Gastin is indeed Hot Shit in Tension he's up to his neck in hospital bills to pay off... Not too mention damage payments for a local Super Market..." Clyde would reveal before muttering the last part between his teeth.

"I mean... I got me this Ol' debit card from the company to pay for all my shit when I ain't got enough money but I ain't really lookin' to be in even MORE debt than I already am, nah'mean?" Said Clyde before Taylor brought up the issue of his missing belt.

"That's actually where the damage payments came from. Got ambushed in a supermarket. Lost ma' belt." Clyde added with a careless shrug. He wasn't too upset over losing it. "... I know what belt you're lookin to have. The same goes for me. Well, just in a different company." Clyde remarked.

"Oh." Taylor said about Clyde's belt. "Bummer, I guess." She shrugged.

She had to think about it for a moment before she began to put together what he was referring to with hospital bills. Then it dawned on her. "Ohhhhhh..." She said, her eyes wide and glassy as she thought it through.

"Dude, you should talk to Mercy about that shit. If you racked up some bills in an AFW match, then AFW should be paying for that. Screw that. And do they not pay you in Tension? Don't you have, like, health insurance or something?"

Taylor actually had no idea how the Japanese health care system worked. All of her medical needs had come in the form of being beat up, and had been taken care of by the company. She wondered how it was that Clyde ended up getting stuck with all that. Maybe he was just dumb, and they were taking advantage of him.

"Man... You, like, got shot, right?" She asked, with a faint air of reverence in her voice, as if getting shot was something normal people didn't do. "That's... wow. No one ever really told me or anything, 'cause like, ya know, I didn't know you. Shouldn't... I dunno, shouldn't the company... help? Um..." She paused, suddenly looking uncharacteristically sheepish. "Can I... see it?" She asked, wide eyed.

Then she tried to cover by playing it cool. She looked away and brushed her bangs to the side and pretended to be watching people.

"Nah. It means I can go for the Main Title now" Clyde assured her.

He frowned though as the subject shifted to bills and health insurance regarding Tension, for the most part Taylor was very right. "The Match was at a supermarket and they complained that me and the other chick went overboard on the destruction so they made us split up the damages between myself and the other chick while they covered the rest. The Supermarket shit ain't so bad, the hospital bills are what's killin' me. And that's a long story" Clyde added before he let out a long sigh to explain his financial issues, trying to avoid the confusing and undesirable tale regarding how he even got the hospital debt.

"Tension Pro wrestlers don't make as much money as Friction Wrestlers due to the popularity of your brand. Girls who work both brands get paid a lot more, hence why me and Heather didn't have to worry about money so much back in the day. The AFW takes care of any visits I make to their clinic in matches within the arena but as far as pay goes it's made for basic necessities and some extra stuff on a weekly basis. I get a lil' from merchandise when someone buys a souvenir foam cowboy at the merch booth. But not everyone does that too often."

"AND!" Clyde jutted a finger up like some professor making his point clear. "I can't see Mercy until I get ma'self pimped out with a fresh cut and a new suit. Sooo... Maybe later... I mean I don't even..." Clyde would say proudly in regards to his mission to clean his appearance up before he froze and realized... He didn't even know HOW or WHERE to find Mercy. "....She's prolly busy anyway...." He muttered out before Taylor made it clear she knew about him getting shot and Clyde let out a lightly amused huff in response to her question and dealing with her knowledge of the incident.

"Yeah..." Clyde said with a nod, smiling a bit at Taylor's reaction. "Well I don't like to go blabbering, 'Hey I was shot!', you know?" He teased to her before he sighed. "The company did TRY to help... I think.... I met Lukretia's head of security, Lia Cross and she offered to help but a few months later she just disappeared . The big rumor was The Gatt Attack had me shot right after they jumped me and a lot of fingers were pointed at them but... Lack of evidence. " Clyde would explain before he saw that sheepish look in Taylor's asks before asking to see the wound. Clyde could only grin at Taylor as she did this, finding her mannerisms to actually be kinda cute.

"Ya know this place ain't exactly show and tell, girl." Said Clyde before he pulled back on his jacket to get it out of the way before grabbing his T-shirt and lifting it up to expose his tone yet not very defined abdomen, pointing to the wound with his free hand that was located at the very top of his abdomen and just below his pecs. Not really caring much about the peanut gallery who could be staring.

"I have a hospital debt because for some reason I wasn't put into the care of regular Doctor's... Dr. Chesna Matu, Lukretia's personal physician just happened to make it Kyoto that night and she got a hold of me instead of the Doctors employed there, I really don't know much of the details because I had fallen into a coma or something and My Sister and Heather were the ones who told me all this. When I woke up two months later I owed Chesna 100 thousand American dollars. And that's my life story." Clyde finished with a sigh.

Taylor gazed in wonderment at the little round scar on Clyde's stomach. Her finger hovered near it, as if she was going to touch it, but she stopped short and pulled it back.

"Wow." She said. "That's so crazy. It's like... right there." She wondered what it must have felt like, if it hurt more than getting whacked upside the head with a baseball bat or a lot less. A strange, silly part of her envied him for that experience. She didn't have anything like that, a badge of toughness, even if it was mostly the nature of the wound and the doctors afterward that got him through it.

She shook her head. "Sorry, I'm being weird." She said, and paid closer attention to what he was actually saying. She guffawed.

"Dude! Fuuuuck thaaaat!" She said, and gave him a shove on the shoulder. "People can't just charge you a hundred goddamn grand while you're unconscious! Get a damn lawyer, you dumb hick, holy shit! How do you get roped into this stuff?" She thought about it for a moment. "Well, fuck it. Chesna-waitaminute. Wait. What? Waiiiit a minute here..." She took a step back as she derailed herself, holding up both hands palms out while her face lit up and she struggled to hold back laughter.

"The Gatt Attack?" She said, and a giggle sneaked out with it. "What the hell is that, man? Is that what Gatt calls her little gang? Ohhhhhmigod, that's so precious! It even rhymes! It's the only word she knows that rhymes with Gatt!" She burst into a fit of infectious laughter that was at once delightful and ghoulish. "Not 'the Gatt Pack'? Didn't think of that one. 'The Friction Fat Gatts'. Get it? Or... I dunno. The Gatt Attack! I'm gonna start a gang and call it The Parker Pack, and it'll be me and Cassie and all we'll do is stand around, act tough, and never have a real match."

She got a good laugh, and then suddenly regained her composure and snapped back into a measure of seriousness. "Anyway, yeah, that's fucked up." She said, and shrugged. "Well, why don't you just do a 'winner take all' match with Chesna? If you win, you don't have to pay her her bullshit money. But like... be careful, because she cheats. She shot Lia with like, tranquilizers or something and that was that. It was awesome... but, ya know, just 'cause it was Lia."