Each and Every Step

"Dude," Taylor said. "We are totally going to watch little baby Tri-State Champ Adrian Kytes. It's gonna happen."

She scrolled through her endless supply of wrestling on her DVR until she landed on one. An old one. Her first defense of her Entropy belt, against Lia Cross and Adrian Kytes. It seemed like as good a place as any to start, and sort of clear the air between them. Water under the bridge and stuff.

"I don't think there's any video of me from New York," Taylor said when Adrian was done ordering. "Unless some dude got it on his cell phone or something, but I actually did alright. I only had a few matches before I came here, and I didn't lose any of 'em.

"But, funny story, my first match was against some other brand new chick. Bell rings, and I'm fuckin' on her, ya know, and she just wasn't ready for it. I just mauled her, man, like, she showed up for a match and just got mugged instead. I got the pin and she didn't even want to try to kick out. I thought I was pretty hot shit.

"Then match number two, another girl, pretty new, and same damn thing. Bell ring, bang, I'm hittin' her with knees, manhandling her, tossing her around, just abusing the chick for a few minutes and by the time I pin her, she just wanted to go home and curl up and cry. The crowd was taking notice, too, like, damn this girl might actually be something, for real.

"Third match, I knew I had her. She had a lot more experience than me, but fuck that, I was unstoppable. I was a nineteen-year-old wrecking ball. So then the attitude came out, and I started clowning on her, ya know, playing it up and shit and making fun of her and talking trash. The bell rang and bang," She clapped her hands and shot one hand out. "Across the ring in half a second, running at a hundred miles an hour face-first into this chick's boot. She just booted me in the face, and it was lights out." She slapped her forearm against her hand like it was her falling over. "It looked like I got shot in the face. I couldn't even get up, so she just left me on the mat and started dropping elbows on me and stuff, just beating the shit out of me, and the whole time she was just making me eat every word I said."

She stretched out and put her hands behind her head. "People got a good goddamn laugh, her too. You woulda laughed your ass off. But the best part is that I still won that match. She took her time, and I didn't quit, and I managed to get a pin on her. I really thought I couldn't lose, until I came here and started losing."

She shrugged. "It is what it is, I guess."

"We are totally not!" Adrian whined in between orders. Her early career wasn't exactly a highlight reel, and she cringed at some of the stuff she attempted to do back then: both in the ring and out of it. Sure it might be good for a laugh or two but still, she hadn't really shared the details of her early start with anyone. She could talk about it but no watching of her repeated failed attempts to be cool in the ring

"Well there's probably not gonna be anything from the really early start stuff from me either. And... that's probably a good thing. I mean... you can think of how bad I am now, I was terrible back then!" She admitted "So no rushing straight through, about 5 matches in I get shuffled back into wrestling school, and regular school 'cause I was only 17 and still had to do exams and shit... and when I got back in they put me in tag matches, so yeah... not the best of starts."

"Becks, well she had issues, but against girls who had about as much experience as we did, she could just throw them around for a bit. Even if she was slow and clumsy, the whole "I can probably flip a car with 4 people in it" shtick probably helped her out a lot more than my 'I can land on my head and not die' thing. Although even then she had issues..."

"So eventually, we get a fairly big show, there's like a hundred people watching us: I was getting my ass kicked I finally get over to tag Rebecca in, our hometown! And she trips on the second rope." Adrian explained "Everyone starts laughing and she just flips, she grabs one of the girls by the leg and just throws her over the top, she takes a bad fall so she's out. All of a sudden people stop laughing and they just figured out that She was really fucking pissed at fucking everyone: So she takes the last opponent, and pretty much tries to crush her between two sets of guard rails. Rips them out and tried to sandwich her... so that almost got us kicked out for-unnescecary brutality when just being bad didn't. Fun."

Taylor fast-forwarded through the irrelevant matches in the lower part of the card and let it play once she reached something interesting. Macky Ueto and Chigusa. Taylor remembered rooting for Macky in this one, and she very rarely pulled for the bigger girl. She and Chigusa have had sort of a bumpy relationship.

By the end of Adrian's story, Taylor couldn't hide her distaste. She wore a scowl and shook her head. "Man, back when she was pissed at me I wish she had come to find me. I would've taught her a thing or two about unnecessary brutality," she said, and then looked back at Adrian. "Can I just say that I don't like any of your friends? That's probably obvious, I know, but can we just accept that for what it is so we don't end up in a brawl in my living room?"

Rebecca, like a few other people in the league, had always turned Taylor's stomach. Anyone with a massively unfair advantage who abused it at the expense of smaller girls immediately raised Taylor's blood pressure. She had been picked on, pushed around, and beat up for so much of her teenage years that the old feeling was still never too far from the surface. That feeling that someone wants to hurt you and you're powerless to stop them. That you have no control. The terrifying sickness in her stomach that went along with it was one of the things that always had driven her to train so hard.

"Well, anyway. I wish I could've sucked like you, maybe I wouldn't have done so much losing," she said, and then remembered that she had opted to watch a match with Chigusa. She mentally cringed, she wanted to change it now that she was feeling sensitive about her setbacks but the match had already started. It'd be awkward to just skip it now.

"I think Macky's alright. And Chigusa... she's Chigusa. I dunno."

"Oh..." Adrian said, slightly disappointed in Taylor's attitude, she hadn't really finished the end of the story but, it was probably best to end it before things got hostile. "Okay..." she sighed before quickly adding "That doesn't include Cassie, right?"

Deciding to ignore her bitter comments for the sake of civillity, she unstead tried to focus on the match on screen "Wasn't there something stupid about this match? I think Lukretia did something to Chigusa before hand, then set Macky on her like an attack dog."

"No... I like Cassie." Taylor said quietly, holding the remote in both hands on her lap.

"Oh, yeah, totally. Lukretia starts to shrivel up if she doesn't fuck with people enough. And Chigusa was like... I dunno. Her favorite squeaky toy. I feel bad for Macky. Chigusa's half her size with a goddamn vibrator in her pants, and she still beat her. Man..." She restrained herself from getting started on a rant about Chigusa. And Adrian.

She sighed, and glanced across at Adrian. "Sorry," she said. "I'm a bitch, I know. But, like, you can't deny that your friends are bitches too. I wouldn't mind Rebecca so much if she wasn't like somebody's dad playing on the little league team. She just..." She trailed off. She wasn't going to continue.

"She scares me to death," she said, looking down at the remote and rubbing her thumb over the buttons. "And like... you've gotta fight those things. Right? I mean she might as well be Killer King or some shit. I'm not even sure anymore. Whatever."

She turned her attention back to the TV. "Wait, look, here's the point in every fucking match where Chigusa isn't winning so she starts punching people in the puss..." On the screen, while struggling in the vise of Macky's thick thighs, Chigusa freed herself by punching Macky in the crotch.

"There it is."

At last! some common ground between the two, even if it was just bitching about how their boss or ex-boss was a sociopathic psychotic... other mean words. "Ugh, don't remind me: worst decision I made in coming here. It was a new place, I was a fresh face, I'd thought I'd try and impress the boss so I didn't get canned after pissing off everyone. Big mistake. It never descended to the levels of the Bear Skin Rug so I didn't have to spend a year getting treated for whatever... things you have to be treated for when you go within 5 feet of her for prolonged periods of time, still... it sucked." Adrian rambled on "And yeah... that probably had to really suck but this was Macky's first match in years, and she was totally just playing around most of the time. Especially when she found out what was going on, at least I think so... probably way wrong about that."

When the conversation swung back to Taylor's opinions on her friends however she took a big sigh and just stared at the carpet for a bit, but something made her twitch, something snapped within her "Wait... What." Did Taylor just admit she was...scared?

"All this time, all the bitching about her, all the name calling, was because you were freaking scared of her!?" She lashed out, her old stubborn attitude returning to the surface "What the fuck!? You insult my girlfriend, to my face, despite never having met her even when we were trying to kill each other. Because you were fucking scared of saying it to face in case she decided to shut you up? Is that it!?"Adrian fumed, not afraid to get right in her face over this. "You never saw her, not once! How would you like it if I just bitched about Cassie non-stop. She's like a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu master or something, so that's a reason to be afraid of her. So what if I just kept insulting her to your face because I didn't want to do it in front of the person who could break my arm in an instant? And don't kid yourself: you, can't."

"Wow, chill," Taylor said calmly. She glanced over at Adrian, but she didn't get worked up. She didn't really feel the need to. The worst that could happen was Adrian beat Taylor up, and that would be nothing new. Then Taylor would throw her out of her house and that would be that. Whatever.

"I've never met her, yeah. I didn't go out of my way to find her just so I could have the pleasure or whatever, but fuck you if you think there's anything I've ever said that I wouldn't say to her face. That's the whole point. The only reason she's not champ is because she isn't getting booked. I mean, for real, she's got at least a hundred pounds on me. Cassie and me together probably still don't equal one of her. So maybe you're not afraid of her because she's your wet nurse or some shit, but damn, dude. Everyone else probably is."

She sighed. She felt a little flushed, more out of embarrassment than anything else. "So yeah, cry about it all you want, but if ever I happened to meet Rebecca and she came after me because of whatever bullshit between me and you, I'd fuck her up. Call me a pussy for being afraid, but it doesn't matter how I feel about anyone, man. I'd fight polar bear in the middle of the ocean if I had to, and that polar bear wouldn't leave his cave for weeks afterward. Thinking anything else is just going to mess with your head while you're in there, and you just can't have that."

She cracked a smile, and breathed a laugh while she stared into space. "You should be afraid of Cassie. I mean, goddamn. She's like Santa's little helper, but suddenly she's on you and you're about to pass out, and you're not really sure how. She's beast, for sure, but you can talk shit about her all day if it makes you happy. You say what you want. She'd be crushed, though."

"This is not the kind of thing you can just chill from!" Adrian insisted, still fuming "I have a right to be pissed at someone bashing my girlfriend!" But despite her protests, after the initial outburst her rage did subside somewhat, maybe she just needed to get that off her chest before she could really settle down.

"Not everyone. I'm sure there are tons of people who just see someone like that and go 'Oh boy, giant punching bag' or something...And I could totally take Cassie."

"Oh, come on..." Taylor muttered. She wasn't paying attention to the match at all at that point. She'd be happy if she could just avoid a fistfight in her living room with some cosplaying gimp.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure lots of girls look at someone who could crush their skull with one hand and thing 'no big deal'. Be for real, dude. Why are you so stuck on her not being what she is, anyway? What's so wrong with her being a threat? Jealous?" She laughed. "And that's a fight I would like to see if you wouldn't just try to outcheat her. It's even more unfair with Cassie because she's just so fucking... trusting. Like, I think she's learning, but she's so sure that everyone will do the right thing, even when they're smacking her in the head under the ring with a pipe." She said, and a sad look lingered in her eyes while she contemplated if maybe AFW was changing her.

She shifted on the couch and put her feet up, and scowled. "And come on, man. I can barely pump my gas without some bitch talking shit about Akashi to try to get to me. It is what it is, though, I know what I think about Akashi. Akashi knows who she is, so fuck what other people say. Bitches will be bitches, so you just turn it around on 'em, right?"

She put her hands behind her head and leaned back, with her eyes closed. "Look, if you're gonna rage on me again and try to kick my ass just don't mess up the place. Life's too short for this bullshit, though, man. Fuck it. I don't like people you like, you don't like people I like. I don't know what your deal is with Akashi these days, but I guess you know where I stand, right?" She said, and tapped her IMOUTO tattoo on the side of the base of her neck with her finger. "And I'm trying really hard to like you."

"That's not what I... nevermind." Adrian huffed, turning away from Taylor "And I'd totally fight fair against Cassie, just because I'll try to hit and run so I don't get caught in a ground game doesn't mean I'm gonna poke her in the eyes or something. It'd be like... I dunno... punching a puppy."

"It's not that I don't like Akashi... and I'm cool with Cassie... so... yeah." She mumbled out, of course she knew where Taylor stood, she never tried to hide what she thought of other people, mostly in the negative sense, but still: whoever she was close to, she was close to. And whoever she wasn't close to could fuck right off. Adrian... didn't really know where she stood herself. She had made the trip over to Kyoto, asked Taylor to train her but had spent a good portion of hr time just bitching at her. It didn't feel like Taylor was trying to like her or be friends with her, but then again Adrian wasn't making it easy at all for Taylor to get anywhere near close. Always finding something to push her away. Heck this was probably the first time Taylor confessed to being scared of anything and Adrian chose to throw it in her face "When the fuck is the food getting here?"