If You Do It, Do It Right

"...Tell me about it..." Rebecca growled bitterly, not noticing Taylor sizing her up before Cassie came to the rescue. "Hey, if you ever see that kraut bitch Luk, tell me where she is so I can give her a little lesson about proper responses to people treating you like shit."

"Well it's nice seeing you! Good luck in your first match back, unless it's against me in which case I'm totally gonna kick your ring-rusty ass!" Adrian jumped in, waving goodbye as she tried to pull the amazon back to her drink. "You sure you're gonna be okay? you looked like you were gonna explode... no I can't really blame you, it's just, we just [size=85:1hfbiiw7]found this place, don't want to be kicked out and banned again."

"Well... she'll probably be in her office?" Cassie said. She watched Taylor leave, and then stared blankly at Rebecca and Adrian for an awkward moment before turning to leave herself.

Taylor walked down the bar until she caught the eye of her bartender. She put on a big smile for him and held up a finger for another drink. He smiled back and went to work pouring the three parts while Taylor leaned with her palms on the edge of the bar.

Was was determined not to let some freakishly enormous, roided up rage monster bring her down. Even if it did sort of cast a shadow over the exuberance of her return... Of course Taylor would always give it her all in the ring, every time, whether she was fighting a masked bitch or a giant or a pack of rabid dogs.

The thought stuck with her, what if, try as she might, there were obstacles she could never overcome? Then giving it her all would eventually just become her beating her head against a wall as hard as she could.

She sighed. It was better just to put it out of mind. That's not really what tonight was for. She gave the bartender a smile and a wink and dropped the shot in her glass. She raised the glass to her lips and tipped it back, draining an ambitious amount of her third Jager bomb. It was probably crossing over into "too much", but she didn't finish her second one, and to hell with it. It was her night.

She turned to lean back against the bar and rested her elbow in her palm while she surveyed the rest of the club, her hips gently nodding to the beat of the club's thumping soundtrack.

"I'll have whatever she's having, please!" A female voice called out as she walked towards Taylor's back just in earshot of the bartender.

As Rei reached the bar, she took the drink and sat down beside Taylor in one graceful motion. She tapped Taylor's glass lightly with her with a clank before taking a gulp of it. She grinned and placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin against the palm of her hand looking at Taylor with a goofy and happy smile on her face. She wore a tight pair of torn denim jeans, pink converse sneakers and a pink top that said "Bad Girl" on it in graphic designed lettering. She also wore a silver pendant or necklace around her neck which she tucked in under her shirt. Her eyes were always that same emerald green but, her violet hair had faded greatly in comparison to when they last saw each other. It was more of a pink then a purple, it was what happened when she didn't die her hair every month as her hair persistently tried to return to it's natural color. She examined Taylor's garments with a quick non-assuming glance before giving a light smile. Rei was wearing a rather casual attire to her party, she felt a little ashamed that she didn't quite meet Taylor's dress code but then again neither was everyone at the party.

"Hey! Well look who it is! The girl of the hour!" Rei said as she chuckled making direct eye contact with Taylor. She tried to smile but her lips flickered for a moment which showed something like concern. Rei tried to recover her smile but decided masking it would just make it worse and decided to be forward about it.


"You okay?" Rei asked her head tilting her head a little to the side as she studied Taylor carefully. She had seen Taylor's expression from across the club and found it slightly troubling. "You looked a little down! You should be happy at your party, no? What's eating ya? I, Rei, the awesome, will make ya feel better."

Taylor glanced over at the girl next to her, and it took a moment to place her. Clyde's friend. From the mall. She tried to remember if Rei hated her, or if she hated Rei, but it really didn't matter. She seemed as bright and chipper and kawaii-y as she remembered.

"No, yeah, I'm great. I just ran into Rebecca Tomko and realized that I really needed another drink," she said, pointing with her glass over toward the pair from earlier. She took a drink and sized up the spunky Japanese girl. "So what's new with you, Bad Girl? You still, like... hanging out with Clyde and stuff? What's up with that, anyway? I guess us blonde Americans are pretty hot stuff here, but..." She trailed off, absently fiddling with her eyebrow ring with her thumb.

"Aaah..." Rei responded as she pushed the coaster forward to the bartender and gave a quick nod signaling that she wanted a refill.

Turning her gaze towards Taylor, she let out a little chuckle when she mentioned Clyde. It was funny, she was about to mention that she looked like him when she was alone at the bar. However, she didn't feel Taylor would take too kindly to that comment probably misunderstanding it as an insult.

"Huh? Clyde? No, not really. I left AFW for a little while. Partially because I had accepted too many matches in a short period of time. I really did a lot of damage to myself so I decided a break was in order. The second reason was I needed to train in more striking. Clyde showed me the basics but he eventually had nothing left to teach me." Rei said as she drained her drink in one gulp.

"Ahhh~" Rei let out an exhale of air as she felt the liquid burn it's way down her throat which strangely refreshed her.


"Believe it or not Taylor, Clyde and I are just friends. I wouldn't do anything that'd compromise what he has with Mercy even though I think he deserves better. For all his drinking, his pessimistic out look and his less than gentleman like behavior, he's a genuinely nice person and that is hard to come by especially here. " She said rather flatly. "Hmpf, well I wont say blonde hair is a bad feature to have but it doesn't really matter to me if a guy's American, Japanese or African. Doesn't really matter... I will say though I do think an English accent would be a major turn on for me though."

Rei giggled as she pushed the coaster forward again. "Umm... can you show me what's on tap? Ah.... Oh! Steam Whistle, please! AWESOME!"

She grabbed the glass of beer and started to look at her drink. It was her ritual to wait for the white head of the beer to dissolve into the golden liquid before she drank it.

Taylor raised an eyebrow at Rei, who has successfully just drank as much as Taylor had the entire night. She wondered if maybe she just had a terrible tolerance for the stuff, and it made her feel a little silly. Rei, despite being roughly the same size, seemed so much younger and smaller than her, and she felt the need to at least out-drink the little idol.

Was she an idol? She looked like it, but she couldn't remember.

"Oh, no, I believe that," Taylor said with a laugh. "Believe me, it's not hard to believe Clyde doesn't have chicks lining up to take a crack at him. First time I met that dude he was sloppy drunk and he cried about his ex a little, then he followed me when I left and tried to beat my ass. Then after I got married he stopped by and ended up picking a fight with Johnny." She shook her head. "I know he's not a total douche, but goddamn... It seems like all the douchey parts are on the outside."

She put her glass back down on the bar and quickly got the bartender's attention. She bounced in place while she waited for the next drink, energy drinks seemed even more redundant than alcohol for her. After the drink came she took a step away from the bar and turned back to face Rei, dancing in place and moving her hips to the music.

"So ya know I'm coming back to Friction?" She asked. "Like, I'd offer to help train you with that stuff, but like, I might have to beat your ass at some point. We're competition again, right?" She laughed. "It's cool, though. Ya know, the first time we met I could've sworn you were Kawaii, but... I guess I shouldn't try to make that call so much. I think I pissed of that Tatsuki chick earlier. I think you were pissed at me too, but I dunno. C'mon," she said, and grabbed Rei's wrist, not really accounting for the fact that she was holding a beer. She yanked her up to her feet. "Let's go dance." She downed the last of her drink, shook her head, and grinned.

Rei listened to Taylor chatter on but the more she did, the more it difficult it became to suppress as sigh. It's not like Rei hated Taylor, she may be a bit blunt but she was honest in whatever she said. However, the girl was a bit insensitive in her own opinion. She knew Clyde had gone through a lot with Heather which left her in no man's land between them. It was hard to talk about Heather with Clyde and vice versa. Clyde had been deeply wounded after what had happened, despite his tough guy exterior, he was sensitive. Clyde was young, stupid, stubborn and in love. He was just another guy who got hurt in the game of love and that's all there was to it. She zoned out for a moment thinking about Clyde before she heard Taylor's next comments.

"That's okay... I didn't see you as 'competition' when we first met either." Rei said with a sly smile as she was about to take a sip of her beer as the white head of the beer had finally dissolved into the golden liquid.

Although Rei may have been slightly smaller than Taylor, she had developed a tolerance for alcohol after hanging out with Chigusa and Megumi for an unsaid period of time which she could bleakly recall. She wasn't planning to get completely inebriated tonight though in fact this was going to be her final one and she was going to slowly savor it. She would dance a bit, talk with a few other guests, have a few laughs and go home. As she reviewed her plan, she felt a hand tug at her wrist as she was lifting the glass.

"Woah!" This caused her to dump the drink over her shoulder and onto the floor. Luckily, she didn't get too wet from what had happened. Rei felt the glass slip out of her fingers as she turned around trying to grab at it before it hit the floor. Luckily, she managed to grab it in mid air after playing hot potato with herself. She put it back on the coaster and pushed it toward the bartender who was starring at her.

"...sorry..." Rei said weakly as she lowered her head apologetically as the bartender gave a sigh.

"Sorry!" Rei said again before getting up to throw some paper towels onto the wet spot on the floor.

Taylor stopped in her tracks, caught between the dance floor and the mess she'd just created. Should she help clean it up? Should she just forget Rei and go dance? She didn't know the girl, but she still got the feeling from her that she didn't like her. She didn't say anything, so she had no idea what she was thinking. She'd feel so stupid for hanging around the girl if she really didn't want Taylor around.

And wasn't she supposed to be all quick and stuff? How the hell does someone fumble a drink like that? And... were those paper towels on the bar the whole time? Or did Rei bring them from home?

"Wow." It was all she could think to say. She felt like such an ass, but she wasn't even really sure why. She wanted to just go find Johnny and glue herself to him for a while.

Rei grabbed a few more paper towels from the bar and utilizing her foot managed to wipe it away into a corner. She had used copious amounts of paper towels to clean up the mess before wiping it away by utilizing her foot. This way the floor wasn't too wet and she was confident no one would slip on it. She dragged the paper towels under the bar and left the clusterfuck of beer soaked paper towels under there. It took less then half a minute to brush the mess aside, Rei didn't really think much of it.

"All done!" Rei said in a jiffy as she put her hand on the small of Taylor's back leading her to the dance floor. "What are you waiting for? Come on! Let's go! Let's go! The night isn't getting any younger!"

She bobbed her head up and down as she got the beat, her movements started out small in her confined space moving her feet side to side and making every movement flow gracefully letting her hair toss from side to side as she moved her hips. Slowly, Rei let go and let the bass take control of her body as she moved in sync with it. She smiled widely at Taylor before walking backwards in a moonwalk just for shits and giggles.

Taylor was relieved to escape to the relative safety of dance floor. She didn't waste any time warming up to the music, and then she was all hair and hips and high hands and flirty little touches. If she wasn't going to be a wrestler, she wouldn't have minded being a dancer.

She guffawed at Rei's moonwalk, and returned with a spin of her own, ending with her feet apart and her hips to one side, with a saucy point and a wink at Rei. She laughed. Akashi couldn't dance to anything this side of 1900, and Cassie, while adorably dorky, wasn't really much for dancing. Having someone to dance and be stupid with was nice.

"Hey," she said. "So... Is there anyone you don't think you could beat?" She asked. She had to ask. She couldn't just be the only one.