Pentiti, scellerato! - Cassie and Serona (Completed)

So--Cassie was going to play it fair, hm? At least at first?

Good choice.

(But she'd keep her eyes open)

Keeping her elbows down, Serona grabbed Cassie's biceps. She'd then get up on her right foot, twist to the side. The goal was to get some space between her stomach and Cass's leg, where see could slide her right hand. From there, if Cassie wasn't being too troublesome, she'd go for a deep grip on the collar--with her head up. She wasn't in the mood for a triangle choke today, thank you very much. Maybe it was one of her quirky predilections, but getting choked out by a near-stranger just wasn't Ser's style. In the long run, she wanted to get out of the guard, however loose it might be, and transition to the side-mount.

"Settling in? Oh, I guess you could say I'm finding my place among the girls..." Ser shot the red-head a grin. As fine and deadly a point as she brought to her matches, she really did enjoy the game--with no one to watch or judge but you and your opponent. And anyway, talking was nice. "It's a nice spot. And getting better."

Catch my drift?

Cassie S-gripped her hands behind Serona's neck and stubbornly kept hold of her upper body, no matter how she pushed on her arms. Her chin was pulled into her chest as Serona tried to pass, which was uncomfortable but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Her body was completely relaxed, like a wet noodle, though her mind was more preoccupied.

It was a little weird, she thought, that she was more comfortable fighting the tall, sinister brunette than she was just talking to her. Nothing put her at ease quite like some friendly grappling.

"That's good..." She kept her legs up high enough to keep Serona from being able to just hop over into side control, and transferred one hand down to her opponent's right ankle, the one she had stepped forward with. Her other hand remained wrapped behind Serona's neck. "It might be harder than you think, though. Sometimes something new comes along and you don't know what to do."

She might've been able to take that sweep and roll Serona onto her back before she had anything to say about it, but she waited. She had her grip on the lanky girl's ankle, and her guard intact, and it would be easiest to wait for the her to make a move before she sprung her trap.

That something new just then was Cassie's guard. Well, maybe it wasn't new, but it was a pain, and Ser felt the hand on her leg. She wondered briefly--frantically--why Cassie didn't take the full mount. With her technique, the sweep shouldn't have been a problem.

"...You know, I get the feeling you think you're toying with me, Cass..."

Grinning and staring down at the so-called ducky's midsection, Ser took her hands to the smaller girls hips--but as soon as she did that, she realized she wasn't going to be able to crawl back up into a position from which she had any hope of escaping the guard. They hadn't been at this long, but Ser had already gotten the real idea that she was going up against someone with far superior technique.

It was exhilarating. And unsettling.

Well, maybe it was time to take a risk and mix up schools, then. From Cassie's hips, Serona would attempt to slip her arms into the fausa, the spaces under Cassie's knees, and grab her legs. From there, she would try to use her superior size and strength to lift Cassie, and flip her in a suplex.

Cassie didn't hesitate to take the opportunity when it came. When Serona adjusted her feet to try to lift Cassie up, Cassie yanked hard on the girl's ankle to steal it out from under kicked against her hips to knock her onto her back.

The next part was easy. Cassie tightly wrapped her legs around Serona's and snaked her arm around her ankle to grab the side of her foot, bracing her free hand on her own wrist to add power to the hold. Just like that, Cassie had Serona in trouble, and it looked like the most natural thing in the world to her.

"Sorry," she said, and nowhere else was her Canadian accent more apparent. "But it's really important to be respectful and to look out for your opponents, because there's always someone better than you. And I'm way better than you." She had the hold in deep. She had her dead to rights. For training's sake, she should have let her go and just started over. She didn't let go.

"Leg locks are the most dangerous, because by the time it hurts enough to make you tap, your knee is already ripping apart," she said, torquing Serona's foot some more to add more pressure to her ankle and knee. "Are you paying attention now?"

Serona started tapping before the pain even started. The sheer mastery of the technique both thrilled and terrified her, and it pushed her altogether over the edge.

Actually, at first, deep down, there was something delightful about It. The way Cassie could unload, every part of her body exactly in its place, fluid and yet machine-like in its precision throughout--it produced in Serona a feeling of stricken admiration and aspiration, like every craftsman of good faith feels before real skill.

But that was just a brief, happy flash. Then, the pain started.

"...Nngyeh, OK--OK!"

You got me!

But the master wasn't about to let Ser go, it seemed. That niggling something, that oddness she had at first been so sure belied a trap...It was as bad as she imagined it--only now all her schemes to anticipate and counteract it seemed childish in retrospect.

"It's really important to be respectful and to look out for your opponents..."

(Yup, this is about last night, Ser, old girl, as you knew it would be, have known for some time, down in the deep chilled depths you've tried so hard to ignore today--it's here, come earlier than expected to claim you, you darling monster~)

Serona clung to the mat, eyes clenched closed. The pain in her hyper-rotated knee and ankle shot angry, live wires up her side--bad enough in themselves, and warnings of worse to come. She gasped, she cringed, she went scarlet in the face imagining the spectacle she must have been for the others in the gym. And she tried not to imagine where this out-of-control situation was leading--which Cassie shortly made much harder:

"Leg locks are the most dangerous, because by the time it hurts enough to make you tap, your knee is already ripping apart..."

"--STOP! Please... please-please-please... I have a headache, a really bad headache, I might be concussed...Please..."

Cassie gently eased off the pressure on the leg lock and gentle released Serona's leg, and then sat up. She didn't buy her sudden head pain at all. "You don't have to make excuses. Just tap or say something, and I'll let go. Are you okay?" She got to her knees and sat back on her haunches.

"I saw your match," she said, like she was coming clean. "I saw what you can do and... what you did. And I'm a lot better than you. I trained my whole life to get to where I am. I'm kind of famous back home. I could probably submit you whenever I wanted, so if I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn't be able to stop me. So... I guess it's a good thing I don't want to hurt you, right?" It was a lesson she had learned very early in life. There was always someone better, and sometimes one of them needed to come help you stay humble. Having two older brothers and a highly regarded father meant that her ego always stayed under control at home, though in Japan, surrounded by so many girls of lesser skill, her confidence might have encroached on cockiness.

She kept her eyes focused keenly on the coy, smooth-talking girl, like she was a snake that might strike at any moment. She wondered briefly if she really did have a concussion, and if she even got it checked out. Probably, though... the way it seemed to only come up when she had her caught in a submission, she was just faking it. It was really immature.

"So if you're not mad or anything, we can keep going. Or if you want to go back to your stuff, that's okay."

Gradually, Serona's pulse returned to an ordinary rate, but she stayed on the ground, covering her face with her hands.

She put her knee through a few flexes. It felt OK. It felt Ok.

For a few moments there, she had been pants-wettingly scared. She'd lived a rather different life than Cassie--one spent pursuing what she wanted by cheating and lying and sweet-talking her way through pre-legal exams and undergraduate relationships. She was only at the AFW because she had cheated her mother, and it was a bad sort of cheat. She'd never be able to look the woman in the eye as her daughter--maybe not even as a smirking wrestler.

So to Serona, a sense of moral hierarchy was absurd.

(At least, so you tell yourself, doll)

But the lack of God's good justice for evildoers didn't mean she got to feel safe. It meant she had to be scared every time she got in a bad spot--because if she was like that, there were other people who were also like that. And they would be like that no matter what you did. You could be a sweet-heart jobber, never threatening anyone, like Blossom. And then one night some monster would come and get you for no reason other than to make a point.

"So... I guess it's a good thing I don't want to hurt you, right?"

Once Serona stopped trembling, she opened her eyes and looked at Cassie--who was looking down with shriveling contempt. Serona remembered the lie she'd told while she was begging for her leg, and for the second time, she blushed scarlet. It had been an automatic lie--not even a good one. If she was really concussed, she wouldn't be wrestling obviously.

(Although she did, really, have this bitch of a low-level headache that wouldn't leave her be. It had been her inspiration in the moment of panic)

But it was childish. It was really childish, and come to that, so was the begging. Childish and weak. She found that she didn't want Cassie to see her that way. Not because she was another member of that wide audience to which Serona was the eternal stage. No, Cassie in particular.

"So if you're not mad or anything, we can keep going. Or if you want to go back to your stuff, that's okay."

Serona sat up and then bowed low to the mat. That was something she hadn't done since she left Austria.

"I'd like to continue. Please." she said quietly.

"Oh, you don't have to bow..." Cassie said, made shy by the excessive show of respect. "I don't really... like, we don't really..."

She furrowed her brow. Was this just another ruse like the concussion thing apparently was? She really didn't know to what extent she had to distrust Serona, but she really didn't like not trusting her, or anyone. She had always thought that everyone in Japan was so nice, at least before Dark Angel happened... and Mamouru. In general, she really thought that people were good if you gave them a chance. It was just as bad to expect someone to always be a bad person just because they did something wrong as it was for them to have done that thing in the first place.

Maybe she was just too afraid of unearthing another Dark Angel, and going through the same thing again. Maybe she needed to cut her some slack.

"We can just shake hands, usually, but, um... Can I hug you? I really didn't mean to come after you like that, and if you want to work on some things with me I'd be happy to teach you, but more than submissions I think you really need to work on your attitude."

Hug?

What... was this woman? The best submission wrestler you've seen at this place--someone on par with the Austrian masters. Yeah, but a hug? Couldn't she just... bow back? Nod and move on? Something normal?

This just wasn't what she was anticipating, at all, when she came to work, and she just... wasn't in control. Of things. Herself. She was supposed to feel angry, but she didn't, because Cassie was just so damn good and she'd been so damn scared, and OK maybe that made sense--maybe she just respected (feared) Cassie too much to be mad, like Blossom-the-jobber had made her mad just by being weak. Sure. But she couldn't respect... a ducky. Who wanted to hug her.

Just... calm the fuck down. Darling.

Serona sat up. When she met Cassie, her blue eyes--the ones under the red contacts that no ring-side audience never got to see--were cold.

"Well, doll... ma'am. I suppose I'll work on that." And then after a pause: "...And if you don't mind my asking, why'd you spring this on me? There must be a dozen wrestlers around here with 'bad attitudes.'"

Of course she knew the answer to that. Because Blossom had been the work of a monster. What she really meant to ask is: what the fuck kind of person breaks down monsters and then asks for a hug?

Cassie closed her eyes and nodded. "I know. There's a lot those. But they're not here, you are."

She decided not to push for the hug. Serona didn't seem to be much of a hugger, and that was okay, even if it was weird. "My family runs a jiu jitsu school back home, and another one in New York City," she said. "When a new guy shows up to class and has a bad attitude, and he's careless with his training partners, they'll pair him up with my dad or one of my brothers or another instructor. They don't put up with any funny stuff. Sometimes they just leave and don't come back, but sometimes they get the idea and shape up." She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands on top of her thighs. "Either way, it's good, because the bad part either disappears or walks out the door. I mean, didn't you feel bad at all? You really hurt that girl a lot. Imagine if that was you!"