Bury the hatchet, bring out the knives

Adrian really did not want to go through with this. It was the last thing she'd ever thought she'd do and one of the last things she ever wanted to do, but she knew that she had to do it sooner or later. And it was her idea anyway.

The potential rematch with Natasha was weighing heavily on her mind, considering how easy she had been chumped then crippled last time by the French woman she really needed to step her game up, less fake title belts: more serious training. And for what she had in mind she couldn't just fall back on her usual training partners like Cecilia or Tina. She needed some real help, someone she could rely on to chew her out when she fucked up even the smallest detail until she got it down perfectly. She needed Cassie Elliot.

But for only tangentially related reasons.

Hanging out by the apartment building of one Cassie Elliot, Adrian took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

Thump, thump thump, bang!

Cassie jumped down the last 3 stairs and rounded the corner to pull open the front door. She wasn't expecting anyone, but it had to be Taylor or Mamouru, or maybe Akashi had her hands full. Maybe she went grocery shopping and had lots of stuff! Cassie was immediately excited by the possibilities for dinner that night.

Standing in the doorway was none of the above, and it caught her completely off guard.

"You're not... food... hi. Hi! Adrian, oh my goodness!" Cassie couldn't help but hug her. "You came to see me! Come in! How did you know where I live?" She thought for a second. "Actually nevermind that part. But hi! How are you?"

She stepped aside and ushered Adrian into a room with a couch and a large TV and ukiyo-e paintings on the walls. It was somewhat of an odd mix of Japanese tradition and western values.

"Let me get you something to drink!" She sped off to the kitchen.

Adrian was kind of nervous when she heard the stomping to the door, after all: she found out Akashi was Cassie's roomate and she really didn't want to meet up with the Sumo right now. "Nope, if you want I can go get cookies or something." Adrian suggested before the excitable Canadian wrapped her arms around her. "Yeah nice to see you too."

The cosplayer nervously stepped into the house, with how split it was between Japanese and American style of decorating, she wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to do, was she supposed to take her shoes off, where the heck was she going to sit.

"So uh... how you been?" She called out to where Cassie had run off to, not sure what the little jujitsu expert was up to behind the scenes there. A 'drink' was so ambiguous, was it like a soda or something healthy like Carrot Juice or something? "My legs healed now so I'm taking matches again." She tried to make a bit of conversation.

"I'm... good, really good. Pretty awesome." Cassie said, and it was true enough. "Okay, we have... water, I guess. It's good water, though, usually we have... something... oh! Carrot juice! Carrot juice?"

She began to rummage through the cupboard for glasses and set a smallish jug of carrot juice on the counter. She poured one glass of the stuff, because vitamin A and everything, and then hesitated before pouring the second. Adrian was a wrestler, so she was athletic, and athletic people had to only eat healthy things. Right?

But... what if she didn't like carrot juice? For a moment, Cassie was paralyzed with indecision.

"You're better? That's awesome! I... I don't know how you got hurt in the first place, but now you can get back to the gym and everything. That's good. Who's next?"

Adrian grimaced when it turned out Cassie did have carrot juice. It wasn't as though she was on an unhealthy diet... well she kinda was... drankway to much soda and had way to much sugar in general, but compared to what Rebecca ate she was on a relatively strict diet... although Rebecca probably needed to eat twice as much because she was twice as heavy and all that stuff didn't add up as much to her "Water's great thanks!" She said helpfully before the two tackled the meat of the matter.

"Well that's kinda why I came to you... not that I'm challenging you or anything! No! It's that... I kind of need you to do something for me because I've got a big match next month and well... it's against the same person who mangled my leg in the first place. So I need you to kinda..." Adrian tried to explain before falling quiet, not that she was scared that Cassie was going to say "No" at all. When she actually got around to telling her that'd probably be the furthest thing from her mind but it meant committing to her dumb plan that was probably gonna add to the pile of dumb plans that never ever worked. [size=50:2925ekdd]"I need you to re-introduce me to Taylor." She said as quietly as possible

Cassie emerged from the kitchen with the two glasses and handed Adrian her's.

"Really? Who was that?" She asked, and then her jaw dropped. Did she just say what she thought she said?

"What... did you just..." Slowly, like the sun rising over the ocean, a smile grew, stretched itself across Cassie's face until she was lit up like the dawn. She couldn't say anything, she didn't even move, she just stood still and beamed at Adrian. She soaked in the moment, because it felt like a personal victory for her, but also it was a really good thing for two people she cared about.

"Yup." She said at length, with a quick nod.

Adrian winced at Cassie's smile grew wider, the sunbeam nearly blinding the cosplayer from the positive emotions "Whoa-whoa-whoa! You can't just go yup like that! What if this is another one of my over complicated schemes to get at her or something!" She said, waving her hands in front of her face in a pretty transparent attempt to bail on this whole idea.

"Then she'll just beat you up!" Cassie declared, and gestured so wildly that she nearly flung carrot juice everywhere. She took a long victory sip.

"I like carrot juice because it tastes just like carrots." She remarked. The sheer irrelevance of it created a vacuous silence that Cassie promptly shattered by sneezing. "Ah... excuse me."

"So." She said. Down to business. "You want to talk to Taylor, eh? What does this have to do with your match? Is it because you've both been injured now?" She took another sip.

"Nuh-uh! She's like retired now, I could totally take her! Easy!" Adrian insisted as the disgusting liquid vegetable splashed all around, before being really wierded out by the randomness "Uh.. bless you?"

Then came the tricky part "Well it's kinda the fact I need someone who...can...It's complicated alright..." the cosplayer huffed. "Maybe I just want some closure before moving onto the next thing. Yeah, I just need a bit of closure so I can focus." She tried to explain

Cassie blinked. What was Adrian getting at, exactly? Was this a scheme to go after Taylor for some reason? If so, she was a terrible schemer, and probably deserved to end up getting beat up.

"Closure? With Taylor?" She said. "Are you still hung up on what happened with Taylor? Because... I don't think she really holds a grudge or anything. She's really loosened up since she... retired. She doesn't worry about that old stuff so much anymore, so I'm sure that... ya know, something."

No hard feelings seemed a bit too far. There probably were some hard feelings on both ends, but these days when Taylor's old competition came up in conversation, there were no snide remarks or sarcastic banter. That alone made Cassie wonder, but Taylor didn't have to see them or worry about fighting them, and Cassie imagined that was an enormous load off her shoulders. Taylor had always carried around too much baggage like that.

"I mean, you were competitors, right? Just doing your jobs, even if... you know, even if you didn't play fair and all. I don't think Taylor hates you." She said. That was probably the most accurate way to put it.