Post by Emma Danielson on Jan 3, 2016 9:38:44 GMT
Fear.
Fear is a powerful motivation. I've seen fear make people abandon their moral codes, their friends, everything they had. It drives people to do...stupid things. And Kayla, fear drove you to do the stupidest thing you could.
Fear drove you to make an enemy out of me.
You were afraid that your reign as Shieldmaiden was done. If that referee had his shit together, it would have been. One-two-three, you would have been dead and gone. But you got out of it somehow. Not because you were a better wrestler. Not because you were stronger, or tougher. You tried to bring a weapon into it like you thought you could outdo me, and that failed. No, because you played on how goddamn gullible the referee was, because you made him think I'd just crack you with a chair because I could, you got to walk away still Shieldmaiden.
There's a bit of truth in the lie you wrapped your ass up in, Kayla. I would LOVE to actually be able to plaster your smug face all over the ring with a weapon. And now, thanks to your shit, I get to. It's the gift I always wanted.
I come from a pretty screwed-up place, Kayla. I'm the daughter of a nasty, angry iron-working son of a bitch, I've been thrown out of more bars than I can remember, and I've been in more drunken brawls than you've had paychecks. I've never had the luxury of a lot of support or rules to keep my life going. That's why I love moments like this. That's why I love a fight like this.
No disqualifications means we can throw any goddamned thing we want at each other in the name of putting the other bitch out, and that's how it should be. So go ahead, grab that chair. Swing it around if it makes you feel better. It's all legal now, Kayla. The world is your fuckin' oyster.
But it also means you can't go run to it as the Easy Button. Life ain't got a lot of easy outs, girl. You gotta plow through the blood and the shit and the pain to get to what needs getting, and there's not much you can do to make it suck less. So you learn to do whatever it fucking takes to find those breaks. You're going to lose a lot if you want to go anywhere in life, and you gotta figure out what you're willing to let go.
I know that. Deep down, I've known that for a long time. Took me almost too long to take it to heart. You still need to be taught that lesson, have it tattooed into your skull by steel and bamboo and wood and whatever else I can warp around you.
Wait. I've got an idea. I'll give you a late Christmas gift, a nice way to start off the New Year. I'll give you one final moment with the belt that you've been keeping warm for me the last two weeks, right before I break you into fucking pieces with it. Call it a going-away present.
Because you WILL be going away. Out of my way, out of my hair, out of the picture. Hope the hangover from New Year's ain't too bad, because you're going to need something to dull the pain.
Bottoms up.
The light over the back door to the bar flickers, strobing the alley for a few seconds before a well-aimed thrown beer can knocks it back into alignment. The crowd gathered, roughly fifteen men of various ages and states of intoxication, circles around three men, two squared off from each other and one between them. Several of the spectators are nursing various injuries, from a broken nose to black eyes. One man is slumped up against the wall, insensate and unconscious. The middle man looks to the two in the center, hands out as he speaks with the manner of a referee.
"Alright, just for the record, one more time. Fight goes to knockout or until one of you gives up. You two decide how far you're willing to go, but nobody leaves the alley and nobody's drinks are in the line of fire. We fight until nobody wants to go, and the winner walks away with the pot. You two got that?"
The man on the left, a heavyset, grizzled man in his apparent mid-forties, nods quickly, adjusting his gloves. The other man, a much lankier man, nods after a moment as well, teeth chattering in the sub-fifty degree Oakland weather. The makeshift referee takes a step back, and signals to both men.
For a few moments, the two men square off with each other, bobbing and swaying. Then, suddenly, the burlier man charges, putting his shoulder down. The tall man immediately begins raining awkward fists down on his shoulders and back, but the tackle is swift, and the larger man's hands rain down sloppily and heavily, like a pantry being dropped on someone's head. The blood flows from the lanky man, and in a matter of moments the "referee" surges forward to pull the big man off, shouting at him.
"Louie, LOUIE! PULL OFF! HE'S OUT! COME ON, HE'S DONE!"
The older man stands up, grinning victoriously. He flashes his bloodied knuckles to the crowd, some of whom shy away and some of whom hoot appreciatively. The man pounds his fists together, shouting.
"WHO WANTS TO STEP UP, HUH?! WHO'S GOT WHAT IT TAKES?! COME ON, DON'T BE FUCKING PUSSIES! WHO WANTS A PIECE OF ME?!"
The crowd hoots and hollers, but a single voice is audible above it, years of practice helping it cut through the noise of a raucous crowd.
"I do."
The far edge of the crowd turns as one to look at the source of the voice. Emma Danielson, her hands in her pockets, strolls towards the massed group, ripped and worn jeans pairing with a tanktop that reads "Sweat Dries, Blood Clots, Bones Heal" and her usual combat boots. "Louie" snorts, chuckling and shaking his head.
"Nah, girlie. You run on home. This ain't the fight for you."
Emma flashes a quick grin, humorless and full of malice. She eyes the pocket of the referee, noting the conspicuous bulge over his wallet, and calls out to him.
"Hey, how much you got into this little brawl for all?"
The referee replies after a second, clearly not expecting to be addressed.
"Two hundred all told. We all put in a twenty to fight. Everyone else is either a ride home or just likes the spectacle."
Emma nods, pulling her own wallet out. She fishes out three hundred-dollar bills, walking up to him and pressing them into his hand. Emma curls his fingers around them with a sick look in her eyes.
"Call that my buy-in. Now..."
She turns around, looking Louie in the eyes again. Louie pauses as they lock gazes, taken aback by the cold fury in her gaze. Emma's lips remain curled in a smirk that could be charitably termed sadistic.
"...you still think this isn't the kind of fight I want?"
Louie pauses, smirking before shaking his head and beckoning Emma in. The referee opens his mouth, stepping forward as he did for the first fight, but Emma waves him off, cracking her neck.
"Heard the spiel the first time. Looks like anyone who had the guts to step up already has...that mean I'm the only thing standing between you and half a G of good times?"
Louie chuckles, a deep, rumbling noise laden with a life of poor habits, and nods. The leering grin he flashes back at Emma is nothing short of suicidally overconfident. His tone of voice suggests that if he had any fear, it's been buried beneath similarly primal, but far less useful emotions.
"Hey darlin', nothing's stopping us from splitting that good time. I promise ya, I can show you a thing or two."
Emma chuckles, and the tone behind it earns a half-step back from the spectators nearest her. She shakes her head, eyes flitting to the referee.
"Call it."
The referee nods, his hand dropping. Louie hunkers down to start his analysis, but unfortunately for him, Emma doesn't give him the time. She immediately lunges forward, leaping and driving the heel of her palm straight into Louie's temple. She's rewarded with a reeling opponent, defenses dropped, and capitalizes by grabbing his hair in both hands and hauling his head down to meet her rapidly rising knee. The whiplash backwards causes the crowd to shift, backing out of his way as he staggers away to recover from the strikes.
Emma chuckles, rushing forward after him. Louie turns around into a quick series of jabs, each coming from a new angle and each serving their purpose of disorienting him. The onlookers watch in awe, realizing that these aren't the half-trained flails and swings of a back-alley drunk. Louie staggers back against the alley's Dumpster, throwing an arm over the lip of the metal, and manages to summon up a burst of strength sufficient to deliver a massive right hand to Emma's face.
She staggers back, clutching her forehead as she doubles over. Louie manages a chuckle, shaking his head and straightening up fully. He begins slowly advancing on her, grunting out words through the pain.
"See, girl, this just ain't your weight class. Now, offer still stands. You wanna walk away at any time, ain't none of us gonna hold it against you. Maybe we'll hold other things against you..."
A few of the audience chuckle nervously on cue. Emma looks up, a rivulet of blood trailing down from over her eye. Her eyes are wide and wild, and she laughs as well. This time, it's not a chuckle, more a heartily amused cackle. Emma runs the heel of her palm along the cut, smearing blood on it, and licks some of the excess off of her hand, looking up at Louie from her crouched state.
Louie stumbles backwards again, unnerved, and that moment of hesitation is all it takes for Emma to strike. She runs forward again, driving her fist into his solar plexus, and follows up by grabbing his collar as he doubles over. Emma runs with him and slams his head sideways into the brick wall, sending it bouncing off. She spins, bracing again, and the moment Louie staggers back around she rears back and delivers a sickening roundhouse kick to his temple.
The impact drops Louie like a sack of bricks, and Emma steps over him, kneeling down as she straddles his chest. The referee moves in to stop her, but Emma waves him off, shaking her head. She reaches down and tilts Louie's chin up, watching his eyes flutter beneath the eyelids as his body attempted to cope with the trauma it had just been put through. Emma tuts at him, shaking her head disappointedly.
"Aww, Louie. You were so confident. Guess it really didn't mean anything in the end, did it?"
Emma stands up, looking around at the group with a smile. The blood on her teeth glints in the street light, unnerving several men as she slowly turns around.
"Alright, anyone want to try me? Any of you? Going once...going twice..."
Emma pauses for a few more seconds, and when no takers are forthcoming, turns to the referee. The man hastily pulls the collected money from his pocket, and Emma takes it from his grasp with a smile.
"Thanks. I should come here more often. See you around, boys."
With that, she turns and walks back in the direction she came from, casually pulling out her wallet and pocketing the cash. The assembled spectators begin to mill about, some attending to the knocked-out Louie and some watching this strange woman walk away. Emma, for her part, merely whistles to herself, an atonal, idle noise. She rounds the lip of the alley and begins to walk down the street, slipping her wallet back where it belongs.
Emma checks her knuckles idly as another pedestrian walks towards her. He looks over to her, and his eyes go wide as he sees the cut over her eye.
"Oh my God! Miss, are you alright?! What happened?!"
Emma looks over at the man, pausing for a moment before flashing a strangely charming smile at him.
"Oh, nothing I couldn't take care of. Fat alley cat thought he wanted trouble with me. Set him straight. You have a great night, and happy New Year."
The man nods, mumbling a reply, and Emma walks on, smiling and oblivious. The man stares back at her as he walks, still unsettled by the image, and Emma cheerfully strolls into the night, bloodied and victorious as we fade to black.
Fear is a powerful motivation. I've seen fear make people abandon their moral codes, their friends, everything they had. It drives people to do...stupid things. And Kayla, fear drove you to do the stupidest thing you could.
Fear drove you to make an enemy out of me.
You were afraid that your reign as Shieldmaiden was done. If that referee had his shit together, it would have been. One-two-three, you would have been dead and gone. But you got out of it somehow. Not because you were a better wrestler. Not because you were stronger, or tougher. You tried to bring a weapon into it like you thought you could outdo me, and that failed. No, because you played on how goddamn gullible the referee was, because you made him think I'd just crack you with a chair because I could, you got to walk away still Shieldmaiden.
There's a bit of truth in the lie you wrapped your ass up in, Kayla. I would LOVE to actually be able to plaster your smug face all over the ring with a weapon. And now, thanks to your shit, I get to. It's the gift I always wanted.
I come from a pretty screwed-up place, Kayla. I'm the daughter of a nasty, angry iron-working son of a bitch, I've been thrown out of more bars than I can remember, and I've been in more drunken brawls than you've had paychecks. I've never had the luxury of a lot of support or rules to keep my life going. That's why I love moments like this. That's why I love a fight like this.
No disqualifications means we can throw any goddamned thing we want at each other in the name of putting the other bitch out, and that's how it should be. So go ahead, grab that chair. Swing it around if it makes you feel better. It's all legal now, Kayla. The world is your fuckin' oyster.
But it also means you can't go run to it as the Easy Button. Life ain't got a lot of easy outs, girl. You gotta plow through the blood and the shit and the pain to get to what needs getting, and there's not much you can do to make it suck less. So you learn to do whatever it fucking takes to find those breaks. You're going to lose a lot if you want to go anywhere in life, and you gotta figure out what you're willing to let go.
I know that. Deep down, I've known that for a long time. Took me almost too long to take it to heart. You still need to be taught that lesson, have it tattooed into your skull by steel and bamboo and wood and whatever else I can warp around you.
Wait. I've got an idea. I'll give you a late Christmas gift, a nice way to start off the New Year. I'll give you one final moment with the belt that you've been keeping warm for me the last two weeks, right before I break you into fucking pieces with it. Call it a going-away present.
Because you WILL be going away. Out of my way, out of my hair, out of the picture. Hope the hangover from New Year's ain't too bad, because you're going to need something to dull the pain.
Bottoms up.
The light over the back door to the bar flickers, strobing the alley for a few seconds before a well-aimed thrown beer can knocks it back into alignment. The crowd gathered, roughly fifteen men of various ages and states of intoxication, circles around three men, two squared off from each other and one between them. Several of the spectators are nursing various injuries, from a broken nose to black eyes. One man is slumped up against the wall, insensate and unconscious. The middle man looks to the two in the center, hands out as he speaks with the manner of a referee.
"Alright, just for the record, one more time. Fight goes to knockout or until one of you gives up. You two decide how far you're willing to go, but nobody leaves the alley and nobody's drinks are in the line of fire. We fight until nobody wants to go, and the winner walks away with the pot. You two got that?"
The man on the left, a heavyset, grizzled man in his apparent mid-forties, nods quickly, adjusting his gloves. The other man, a much lankier man, nods after a moment as well, teeth chattering in the sub-fifty degree Oakland weather. The makeshift referee takes a step back, and signals to both men.
For a few moments, the two men square off with each other, bobbing and swaying. Then, suddenly, the burlier man charges, putting his shoulder down. The tall man immediately begins raining awkward fists down on his shoulders and back, but the tackle is swift, and the larger man's hands rain down sloppily and heavily, like a pantry being dropped on someone's head. The blood flows from the lanky man, and in a matter of moments the "referee" surges forward to pull the big man off, shouting at him.
"Louie, LOUIE! PULL OFF! HE'S OUT! COME ON, HE'S DONE!"
The older man stands up, grinning victoriously. He flashes his bloodied knuckles to the crowd, some of whom shy away and some of whom hoot appreciatively. The man pounds his fists together, shouting.
"WHO WANTS TO STEP UP, HUH?! WHO'S GOT WHAT IT TAKES?! COME ON, DON'T BE FUCKING PUSSIES! WHO WANTS A PIECE OF ME?!"
The crowd hoots and hollers, but a single voice is audible above it, years of practice helping it cut through the noise of a raucous crowd.
"I do."
The far edge of the crowd turns as one to look at the source of the voice. Emma Danielson, her hands in her pockets, strolls towards the massed group, ripped and worn jeans pairing with a tanktop that reads "Sweat Dries, Blood Clots, Bones Heal" and her usual combat boots. "Louie" snorts, chuckling and shaking his head.
"Nah, girlie. You run on home. This ain't the fight for you."
Emma flashes a quick grin, humorless and full of malice. She eyes the pocket of the referee, noting the conspicuous bulge over his wallet, and calls out to him.
"Hey, how much you got into this little brawl for all?"
The referee replies after a second, clearly not expecting to be addressed.
"Two hundred all told. We all put in a twenty to fight. Everyone else is either a ride home or just likes the spectacle."
Emma nods, pulling her own wallet out. She fishes out three hundred-dollar bills, walking up to him and pressing them into his hand. Emma curls his fingers around them with a sick look in her eyes.
"Call that my buy-in. Now..."
She turns around, looking Louie in the eyes again. Louie pauses as they lock gazes, taken aback by the cold fury in her gaze. Emma's lips remain curled in a smirk that could be charitably termed sadistic.
"...you still think this isn't the kind of fight I want?"
Louie pauses, smirking before shaking his head and beckoning Emma in. The referee opens his mouth, stepping forward as he did for the first fight, but Emma waves him off, cracking her neck.
"Heard the spiel the first time. Looks like anyone who had the guts to step up already has...that mean I'm the only thing standing between you and half a G of good times?"
Louie chuckles, a deep, rumbling noise laden with a life of poor habits, and nods. The leering grin he flashes back at Emma is nothing short of suicidally overconfident. His tone of voice suggests that if he had any fear, it's been buried beneath similarly primal, but far less useful emotions.
"Hey darlin', nothing's stopping us from splitting that good time. I promise ya, I can show you a thing or two."
Emma chuckles, and the tone behind it earns a half-step back from the spectators nearest her. She shakes her head, eyes flitting to the referee.
"Call it."
The referee nods, his hand dropping. Louie hunkers down to start his analysis, but unfortunately for him, Emma doesn't give him the time. She immediately lunges forward, leaping and driving the heel of her palm straight into Louie's temple. She's rewarded with a reeling opponent, defenses dropped, and capitalizes by grabbing his hair in both hands and hauling his head down to meet her rapidly rising knee. The whiplash backwards causes the crowd to shift, backing out of his way as he staggers away to recover from the strikes.
Emma chuckles, rushing forward after him. Louie turns around into a quick series of jabs, each coming from a new angle and each serving their purpose of disorienting him. The onlookers watch in awe, realizing that these aren't the half-trained flails and swings of a back-alley drunk. Louie staggers back against the alley's Dumpster, throwing an arm over the lip of the metal, and manages to summon up a burst of strength sufficient to deliver a massive right hand to Emma's face.
She staggers back, clutching her forehead as she doubles over. Louie manages a chuckle, shaking his head and straightening up fully. He begins slowly advancing on her, grunting out words through the pain.
"See, girl, this just ain't your weight class. Now, offer still stands. You wanna walk away at any time, ain't none of us gonna hold it against you. Maybe we'll hold other things against you..."
A few of the audience chuckle nervously on cue. Emma looks up, a rivulet of blood trailing down from over her eye. Her eyes are wide and wild, and she laughs as well. This time, it's not a chuckle, more a heartily amused cackle. Emma runs the heel of her palm along the cut, smearing blood on it, and licks some of the excess off of her hand, looking up at Louie from her crouched state.
Louie stumbles backwards again, unnerved, and that moment of hesitation is all it takes for Emma to strike. She runs forward again, driving her fist into his solar plexus, and follows up by grabbing his collar as he doubles over. Emma runs with him and slams his head sideways into the brick wall, sending it bouncing off. She spins, bracing again, and the moment Louie staggers back around she rears back and delivers a sickening roundhouse kick to his temple.
The impact drops Louie like a sack of bricks, and Emma steps over him, kneeling down as she straddles his chest. The referee moves in to stop her, but Emma waves him off, shaking her head. She reaches down and tilts Louie's chin up, watching his eyes flutter beneath the eyelids as his body attempted to cope with the trauma it had just been put through. Emma tuts at him, shaking her head disappointedly.
"Aww, Louie. You were so confident. Guess it really didn't mean anything in the end, did it?"
Emma stands up, looking around at the group with a smile. The blood on her teeth glints in the street light, unnerving several men as she slowly turns around.
"Alright, anyone want to try me? Any of you? Going once...going twice..."
Emma pauses for a few more seconds, and when no takers are forthcoming, turns to the referee. The man hastily pulls the collected money from his pocket, and Emma takes it from his grasp with a smile.
"Thanks. I should come here more often. See you around, boys."
With that, she turns and walks back in the direction she came from, casually pulling out her wallet and pocketing the cash. The assembled spectators begin to mill about, some attending to the knocked-out Louie and some watching this strange woman walk away. Emma, for her part, merely whistles to herself, an atonal, idle noise. She rounds the lip of the alley and begins to walk down the street, slipping her wallet back where it belongs.
Emma checks her knuckles idly as another pedestrian walks towards her. He looks over to her, and his eyes go wide as he sees the cut over her eye.
"Oh my God! Miss, are you alright?! What happened?!"
Emma looks over at the man, pausing for a moment before flashing a strangely charming smile at him.
"Oh, nothing I couldn't take care of. Fat alley cat thought he wanted trouble with me. Set him straight. You have a great night, and happy New Year."
The man nods, mumbling a reply, and Emma walks on, smiling and oblivious. The man stares back at her as he walks, still unsettled by the image, and Emma cheerfully strolls into the night, bloodied and victorious as we fade to black.
Well howdy there pardner.