Each and Every Step

"Fine. Maybe we'll start a little easier." Taylor said with just a hint of venom.

Over the course of the next two hours, Taylor drilled Adrian on the fundamental techniques of their style, theirs only when Adrian wasn't trying to spit green mist in people's faces. The default move was the dropkick, everything in the air can be related to the dropkick, Taylor explained. Perfecting it is the first step toward perfecting everything else.

She put her through dozens of situations, moving forward, moving back, running, off the ropes, off the turnbuckle, over the ropes, after a sidestep, with a midair roll after the kick to land on her knees, to the chest, to the stomach, the face, the knees, to keep distance, to close distance. And for each one, Taylor pointed out every minute detail that was wrong or could be improved and had Adrian repeat it over and over and over.

It was a process that even got on Taylor's nerves, but she'd trained herself to deal with the repetition because she knew that it got results. She kept an eye on Adrian's knee, and told her to jump off her good leg and kick with the same, and to land in a way that wouldn't screw up her bad leg. Everything had to be perfect, everything started slow, and everything had to be repeated.

By the time they were done, Taylor had nearly lost her voice. She was hoarse, and she downed an entire water bottle before showering and changing back into street clothes, skinny jeans and a black Rise Against t-shirt with a black belt with two pink stars and a chrome buckle. She let her damp blonde hair hang loosely around her shoulders.

"Alright." She said. She had to admit, she was surprised that they'd made it through the session without killing each other, but she'd tried so very hard to be on her best behavior and not subject Adrian to any more psychological warfare testing. "So do you have like, friends in Kyoto, or..."

Adrian scowled at Taylor's venom but she got back to workout, not willing to give up right in front of Taylor.

She'd always thought that she could do a nice dropkick, not the best... but she had other moves as well if she needed to kick someone in the chest or the head, mostly reserving her drop kick for when she sprung off the ropes, a little double jump technique to fake out a lot of people who tried to counter a more traditional attack in the corner. Compared to Taylor, she didn't know shit about dropkicks. Hours and hours of dropkicks, nearly every variation, every bit of positioning, every slight twitch out of place got commented on and forced to correct before she could move on to the next.

By the end of it, Adrian's bad leg was probably the least of her worries as she pulled herself back up, everything aching. It had been hours of flying through the air and crashing back to the mat, and more importantly, after the whole yelling match... when it came down to actually doing the work and just purely focusing on training with little to no time to start sniping at each other... they got on relatively okay. Yeah, Taylor was probably the strictest trainer she'd had (even Tina was probably going soft as a trainer) but she couldn't argue with the results she was getting out of this, it didn't feel like she was constantly banging her head against a wall trying to get a dropkick perfectly, every time she did something wrong it'd be slightly better next time, and she could feel the difference already and today was just the first day.


"I'll just probably crash at Clyde's place... or his sister's, whoever has room." She said, pulling a red T-shirt over her, messing up whatever semi-style her hair was in after her own quick shower.

"Oh, right, yeah, that's cool," Taylor nodded. "You... know Clyde? Ohh, 'cause you're kinda buddies with Heather. Right?"

She paused. She felt awkward. She didn't not like Clyde and all, but Heather and everyone that came with her she just couldn't stand. She had to be careful to resist the urge to creatively state exactly how much she couldn't stand them.

"Hey, his sister Bonnie, like... I've never met her. My first week in AFW I sort of broke into her locker and stole her clothes and got them hooked over a light in the ceiling just to be a dick, 'cause, like... I was trying to get matches. But like, is she an idiot? Ya know, like Clyde?"

"Well I met Clyde first, that's kind of how I got introduced to Heather first time..." Adrian explained, she knew Clyde's place was probably going to be a pig sty, but hell: she's probably lived in worse conditions over the years, but then came on to the subject of Bonnie.

Ignoring the comment about throwing her clothes into the lights, what is this, middle school? her feelings towards Bonnie were kinda complicated... on the one hand she was kind of friendly but as for Taylor's specific question "Just... don't hitch a lift with her. Ever." she settled on, that whole drunk driving incident really shook her up: she could sympathize with her feeling that bad but still: they could have both died on that freeway!

"Oh. Well... no problem there. Is she a sloppy alcoholic like her brother? I kind of assume that if I even meet her, I'll have to deal with the chance of fighting her. But... I kind of feel like that way a lot. You might've noticed," Taylor said, with an ironic laugh at her own expense. "But I'm better about it these days..." She added.

She shouldered her gym bag and started the walk back to her car. She still felt pretty good, it wasn't a hard workout, and despite the unpleasantness it was rewarding to have successfully trained someone. Even if it was Adrian.

She frowned. The constant disclaimers about Adrian that she kept inserting into her thoughts seemed... contrived. She wasn't her enemy anymore, she was just a chick Taylor used to know. An old coworker. Taylor didn't feel clenched up like she used to, she didn't have the feeling in the pit of her stomach like she was in danger and had to be ready to fight back, verbally or physically. She didn't even feel like she was competing with Adrian, so maybe she was distancing herself from her out of habit?

She shrugged. "Well, I don't know where they live and I don't want to find out, so why don't you just crash at my place. Johnny's out of town for the weekend with family stuff, and we have a couch." She felt a little flutter of anxiety, but she brushed it away. What was this, middle school?

"Isn't that kinda why you left?" Adrian asked "I mean, it sucks: but anyone you meet is gonna be someone you're probably gonna have to kick the crap out of, and that's just... it's really freaking bad, I mean that kind of stuff just breeds paranoia." Adrian mused "So yeah... at least me and Becks kind of have contingancy plans if we ever face each other... you'll probably hate them but there's at least one person I'll never have to fight."

Then the offer came for her to crash at Taylor's place. "Um... err... um..." she stumbled over her own words, trying to think of what to say: "Thanks? It'll probably save me having to Wake up Clyde... I know it's past noon but... you know. So thanks!" She settled on, trying not to be as nervous as she already was, it was just an ex co-worker offering her a place to crash and she was all nerves about it, but the more she thought about it, the better idea it seemed to be. The two just seemed to antagonise each other and put mental statements of how horrible the other was just out of reflex, maybe actually spending a bit of time trying to get past that wouldn't go amiss. "So what're we gonna do there? Watch old tapes, crappy movies, crappy old tapes?"

"Yeah..." Taylor said. She knew what it was like to have one person she never wanted to fight. She also knew what it was like to fight her.

"Um, yeah, something like that. I... I actually haven't watched tapes like I used to in like, forever. It literally feels like forever. Like... I was pretty obsessive about it, man," Taylor unlocked her car and threw her stuff in the back. She looked over the car at Adrian as if she expected Adrian to either be impressed or think she was completely nuts.

"I watched every match. I watched the important ones more than once. It was suuuuuch a draaaaaaaaag, man, having to do that all the time, but... I could actually go for some." She said with an ironic grin. "If you wanted to, like, gossip and shit."

She made the short drive back to her place and parked behind the building. She led the way into her surprisingly clean, even somewhat spacious and mostly western, apartment and threw her stuff down in a corner. She paused to pull a wallet out of her pocket and threw a credit card at Adrian.

"Order food," she said. "On me. Menu's are on the fridge." Then she began to make a lap, turning on lights and closing the bedroom door.

"Oh... right... sorry..." Adrian mumbled, remembering about the whole deal involving her and Akashi. Yeah, probably not a good idea to get thinking back along those lines.

"As long as it doesn't end up in a competition of who looked dumber when they first started out on the indies." she joked as she jumped in the car, a lot calmer and with a small smile on her face this time, a lot less nerves.

The apartment itself was really nice, and clean. How did everyone keep things clean? Didn't they have stuff to junk places up with? How else could you tell if it was inhabited? "Ah!" She yelped as she was pelted by the plastic, quickly ending up juggling the card around before getting it under control, and peering through the menus. Her Japanese wasn't the best in the world so trying to make out what she was actually trying to order was a bit of a challenge, the most she could translate was the pizza menu, and she could kind of make out the more oriental take out place. Then the choices.

On the one hand: Pizza was easy. Easy to share, easy to clean up: no dishes neccecary and there were a ton of discount vouchers attached. On the other hand... all that cheese probably wasn't going to be good for her: she was here on training so although she needed the calories to keep her energy up: there was only one thing cheese ended up as, and she didn't want any extra. Plus: just going out for the gooniest meal wouldn't look as though she was really taking this seriously. So... she needed something with energy, but relativley healthy... or at least with a lot of green stuff to make it look healthy, so Japanese it was.

"Do you have any allergies I should know about if I'm ordering?" She quickly asked as she pulled out her phone... "And I don't really know this place's street name and number, I kinda zoned out in the car."

"Allergies? No. And now that I'm not training and stuff, I'm not doing the vegan thing. Yay!" Taylor replied on her way to the living room. She flopped onto the couch and lounged against the armrest while she watched Adrian. "Address is on the fridge, too. I just moved here a little while ago and stuff. I'm a slow learner, ya know, one of the drawbacks of being retarded."

She grabbed a remote and turned on her TV, and began scrolling through endless Friction episodes. "Hmmmmmmmmm..." She suddenly looked back at Adrian, wide-eyed. "Wait, ohmigod do you have video of you from the indies?"

"You were doing the vegan thing? Huh...I guess since we were never really on the road it was kinda easy to try it... compared to just moving around all the time." Adrian took in, at least since she'd apparently stopped it meant she didn't have to stretch her knowledge of the written language too much to find the vegan suitable dishes. Picking up what she thought was going to be a decent selection of food off the list she picked up the phone and started to punch in the number before stopping. "Errr... why would I have that I mean it was kind of 3 years ago and it's not like I'd bring any of that stuff with me so I can privately compare how well I did before to how I'm doing now to make me feel better about myself whenever I start to feel like I suck?" She rattled off way to nervously