Each and Every Step

"Yeah, but that's her thing!" Taylor said. Cassie was like an adorable little puppy, and of course you couldn't just be ruthless with her. Then you have to ask her to not break your arm.

Taylor rode out the silence paying half attention to the match. She fiddled with the remote and put her feet up. When the match was about to end and Chigusa was about to win, she stopped it and went back to the menu of her DVR. She scrolled through episodes, but had a hard time remembering which matches were in which ones.

"I know, right? Time just stands still when you're reminiscing."

She eventually settled on one she knew well, but not from having seen it more than once, Cassie's match against the masked Dark Angel. Maybe Dark Angel could unite Taylor and Adrian under the banner of mutual hatred. Or maybe Adrian would find some bullshit way to defend Dark Angel for her blatant cheating and Taylor would have to murder her.

"So this is when Cassie fought that Dark Angel chick. Have you seen her? She sucks. I don't think she even has any skill at all. She fights like a bitch. She probably picked fights with all the quiet, awkward kids in school for fun. Like, if we could find her and you were into it, I'd go beat her ass right now. But consider this part of your training, I want you to watch this shit, and I want you to tell me what Cassie did right and what she did wrong. A'right? And you can't just-oh, there's the door."

A knock on the front door stopped her short. She looked over at Adrian. "You get it," she said, and let the match play through the entrances.

"Oh!, okay." Adrian said quickly, dashing to the door. "Are you okay with sweet Chili stuff? because there's a fair bit of chili in a few of the things." She said as she brought the bag in, distributing the various thin metal containers between herself and Taylor before focusing on the match. She had offered to be Cassie's manager for this match so she already had somewhat of an idea of what Cassie's strengths and weaknesses were. She just needed to keep calm and analyse it like she was a member of the wrestling observer or something.

"She's too squishy." Adrian said first and foremost. "She's too used to jujitsu competitions, while those can get pretty rough there's a clear divide in what's allowed and what's not allowed, and she's not good at dealing with the stuff she's not normally allowed to do. People kicking and punching their way out of situations, using weight and power advantages when she trained in weight class divided sport. A good punch or kick really does a lot of damage to her compared to Angel so she could probably do with... I dunno, working the bags, kickboxing practice to round out her skill set?" the cosplayer offered as a suggestion. "See, it's not even five minutes and she's already clutching her ribs, that's really bad."

"On the mat, she's awesome. if she knows what her opponnent is doing in the grappling mindset she can counter, block do whatever if she's still got the stamina." Adrian added between mouthfuls of food. "And rolling away like that when she knew Angel was trying to dunk her out of the ring was cool but..." she paused, helping herself to another mouthful of food and water. "She didn't follow up. It's way too early to get a count out victory just on one move like that, even if it's just getting out to roll the masked girl back in the ring, you can't afford to stall this early."

"Yeah, whatever's fine," Taylor said. Her food preferences were incredibly tame, and for a long time her favorite sweet thing was a Graham cracker (sort of a digestive biscuit with a little sweetness to them). She wasn't going to let on in front of Adrian if the food was too spicy, though.

She began eating like a bird in little tiny bites, she was still not all that comfortable eating around people. She was noticeably quiet while the match played on, and as Adrian started in on her thoughts about the match she couldn't help but be surprised. She raised an eyebrow and looked at her while she spoke. She rested her chin on her palm and peered over at her with an odd little smile.

"Damn," she said finally. "You're so much smarter than me."

She took a few more bites and a sip of water while the match played out. "I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there's something wrong with her when she's not in grapple-mode. But she does kickbox. She's a better technical kickboxer than I am, and she's tougher than you think, but... squishy is a good word for it. She fights like it's friendly competition, and it's not. It's war. It's like she's not looking both ways before she crosses the street, because she figures that cars wouldn't come from that way, and then every time she's surprised when she gets run over." Taylor shook her head with a slight scowl.

"But like... you've got a good idea of what she does wrong, but you totally missed what she does right. Check this out," she grabbed the remote and jumped around until she found the part. Cassie was outside of the ring while Angel reset the ref's count so she could beat her up some more. Taylor clenched her jaw.

"Okay, right here Cassie's been getting her ass kicked for like ten minutes. She's in bad shape, and the bitch is working the rules so she can beat her up some more outside. Right here..." She paused. On screen, Dark Angel dragged Cassie to her feet by her hair, and completely out of nowhere Cassie hit a fast flying armbar and immediately had Angel in danger. "That. Goddamn, dude, that's totally not her being good at submissions and shit, that's fuckin' balls. I mean, she's done, right? She's totally out of it, but when she spots an opening and fuckin'..." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "Done. Right there, it's on, and that bitch's arm is about to break. Of course, you can't see under the ring when she bashes Cassie in the face with a pipe." Her voice carried a hint of a snarl.

"She does it again, too..." She went a little farther, and Cassie, against all odds, suddenly caught Dark Angel in a tight STF, almost forcing a tap for the third time before Angel reached the ropes. "Man, if that doesn't... I dunno, man."

Taylor got up suddenly and took their water glasses with her to the kitchen. She needed an out so she could settle herself down. She was getting too upset by the match.

Adrian chuckled nervously when she managed to get a compliment "Well I was just... calling it as I saw it I guess," she said when Taylor pointed out she was focusing on the negative to much "I haven't seen this match before so I'm just saying what I'm picking up along the way. Okay. That was pretty awesome." She admitted when she saw the flying armbar.

"Oh come on! How did you not freaking see that!?" She yelled at the screen "I've been penalized for doing stuff way more subtle than that, you should be leaning over the ropes so you have a good eye on both of them!" She scoled the past ref "Can you believe this bullshit? Oh..." She turned to Taylor only to find her long gone, although she was getting heated about the match: this was probably way worse for Taylor to watch.

Taylor took her time refilling the water glasses. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then turned back for the couch. The match was still playing out on the TV, and very badly for Cassie. After having beat her up badly enough that Cassie couldn't stand, Dark Angel locked on an arm bar. Cassie submitted, but that didn't stop Angel from continuing to abuse her. Cassie's screams formed a backdrop for their conversation in the living room.

Taylor's jaw was set, and her mouth hardened into a harsh line. When she spoke, she was gravely serious.

"This is what you signed up for," she said. She handed Adrian's water glass back. "You can't trust people to play fair, and you can't trust them to let go when they should. Winning the match isn't enough for these bitches. That's why you work your ass off, because if you can't defend yourself then people are going to take whatever they want from you."

She couldn't bring herself to look at the TV again, and she averted her eyes off into a far corner of the room. "I know you think I pussed out in our match, and you won 'cause you were tougher and shit and didn't say the words. But I wasn't going to do to you what this bitch did to Cass just because I could get away with it. I won that fight, we both know it. Sure, I lost the match, but..." She shrugged. "Maybe I could've asked you really nicely to give up or something, I dunno, I just know that nobody's ever gonna make me into something I'm not."

She walked around to her spot on the couch and forced herself to eat some more, even though her appetite was gone and she felt like she was swallowing cement.

The match was getting hard to watch now, despite there being moments where she thought Cassie might have made somewhat of a comeback the ending was just... disgusting. "Yeah..." she said, taking the glass "I guess that's why I never really could give up the whole cheating thing, at least It's how I always justified it to myself. It was a way out, an easy defense: poke to the eye and just get the fuck out of there while still intact. But yeah... that stuff... I never liked it even at the best of times."

"Yeah. You were totally kick my ass back then," Adrian finally admitted "But I didn't know that you wouldn't do that sort of stuff. For all I knew you were every bit as petty and vindictive as... as I was. So I just didn't kind of want to give you the you know... stuff, because I figured that really pisses people of but yeah. I just sucked. Sorry for putting you through that stuff."

Taylor snorted. "Yeah." On TV, the next match was already getting started, and Taylor didn't really pay attention to it.

She took another bite of food, and then realized what she'd just heard. "Wait, what?" She said. "Wow. Adrian, you just apologized to me." She was a little shocked and flattered and grateful all at the same time.

"Well, hey, water under the bridge, right?" She said, and then was too preoccupied thinking about it in between tiny nibbles of food to pay attention to anything else.

Adrian winced when Taylor realized that she just apologized for all her bullshit, expecting a slightly hostile response but instead got what sounded like a sincerly grateful Taylor. "I kind of did want this to be sort of a clean-ish slate but I guess I couldn't really do that without owning up to all the stupid assholish stuff I did or wanted to do. So yeah, water under the bridge." IT was kind of a relief to get that out finally, she should have probably done this ages ago but for some reason she couldn't get anything done quickly. "So what's the next bit of training? [size=85:5tmul61n]please don't be more dropkicks." She asked, finishing off her bits of food before peering over to the semi-filled containers that she'd given to Taylor, wondering if she'd finish them before she got hungry again.

"I... Have never wanted to fist bump someone as hard as I do at this moment," Taylor said, and then added "But I won't. Don't worry."

An easy, knowing smile like a smirk came over her face, and the looked casually over at Adrian. "Tomorrow's gonna be a hard day," she said. "We're gonna find out how far we have to push before you quit. Personally, I'm hoping that you never do, but you will. Everyone does eventually. You can't really be scared of that breaking point, 'cause it's kinda like running out of gas in the car. It'll happen, you just have to plan for it. You have to know how much you have to work with."

She took another bite of food. "It might be more than you think."

"Errrr... okay." Adrian said meekly, it looked like she had a rough time ahead of her tomorrow, with Taylor no longer holding back on the training regime it meant she was probably going to be in the gym for the whole day. At least now hopefully there wouldn't be as many clashes in the gym and maybe she could start making some real progress.