Broken Clocks

Blossom held up her finger for a moment and went into some deep thought, channeling Encyclopedia Brown. There had to be a way to solve Coop's dilemma throw conventional tactics. It was just a matter of realizing the problem and dealing with it accordingly. She needed cover.

Aha.

She grabbed the napkin box and set it by Coop's side, right in a spot where she could pick up the sushi with her fingers and be totally obscured. ”There you go.”

With that demon slain, Blossom sat back and took a moment to give Coop’s counter question some serious thought.

“Well, I like wrestling. I guess it doesn’t always seem that way, because I don’t win a whole lot, but I do. I really do. Even when I lose, I’m having fun. I’ve already met a lot of nice, fun people around here, and I’ve had some cool matches. There are days like this, days that really suck, but there are a whole lot more fun. A good week for every bad day. That’s the dream, right? Doing what you love for a living. Better or worse, I love wrestling. Plain and simple.”

She took a sip. [color]”Plus, it’s a good way to hook up with girls.”[/color] Another sip.

"Oh, shit, thanks." Sandalwood crouches down behind the napkin box, grinning conspiratorially. "You got the common sense, Blossom. Good skill, that!"

She tilts her head to the side, scrunching up her eyebrows and glancing up at the ceiling, as if deep in thought... before snorting loudly at Blossom's closing remark. "Jesus Christ, you're prowlin' the fields, ain't ya, Fields? I can not imagine you've had much, like, frickin' datin' success here, of all places, but I salute your search! Seems like the biggest concentration of lesbians this side of... this... this side of... Jesus, just, like, biggest concentration of lesbians anywhere. Let's just leave it at that. So at least you've got a lot of potential mates!"

"But, yeah, wrestling cuz ya love it, that's a pretty frickin' good reason. Glad you're stayin' positive, girl! You keep workin' on your weaknesses and you'll be shoving through to your next tiers or whatever soon enough! And I'll be right there alongside ya..." Sandalwood snorts out a laugh. "...Or rocketing ahead of you, if you ain't careful! I intend for my rise to be nothin' less than METEORIC!" A pumped fist and a face-splitting grin.

Blossom snagged another squid and scarfed it down, then neatly wiped some squid juice off her lips. "I'm not sure if an object that crashes and burns in flames is really the comparison you want to go for, but I get where you're coming from." She gave Coop a playful kick under the table.

"But I'll stay alongside you as long as I can. You never know what I might do, though. I haven't won, yet, but I never just rolled over and lost, either. I've come close, I just need a little something to help me over the edge. Just not sure what it is, yet." She drummed her fingers along the side of the table, letting her thoughts take her away for a few seconds before she remembered she wasn't alone.

"How do you train?"

Sandalwood grinned, wincing just a little as Blossom gave her leg a good kick. That girl could probably be a kicking machine, if she practiced it! "Oy, don't be so hard on yourself, Buttercup! I'm sure you have, like, plenty of things to offer a mate. Like, uh... a paycheck, or whatever. Eh, I don't frickin' know. Whatever lovey-dovey people want."

She sniggers. "Well, you could always invest in steroids! That's a joke, don't invest in steroids. You just need to develop somethin' like a, a, secret move, or like, a secret technique, or a clever reversal type thing to pull out of your butt. Maybe practice really hard escapin' a certain common hold, so when your opponent tries to pull it on ya, ya suddenly are out and beatin' their tush before they know what hit 'em! Like a stealth trainwreck, comin' for their face!"

"I train the usual way, y'know, weights. Situps. Pull ups. Push downs. Er, no, pushups. Some jogging. Jump roping. Speed boxin'. All that good stuff! Sometimes I practice getting hit, too. Maybe might need to up my training game for the AFW, though." Sandalwood's smile changes from big and glowing and mirthful to small and determined. "I'm not going to get humiliated again, lemme tell ya that much. Sandalwood's going to come out on top."

"Well," Blossom bobbed her head around. "I don't have that much of a paycheck. Not as much as I would if I won more, anyway." She gave Coop a thumbs up and a wink to go along with it. "But I'm working on it. We're gonna work on it."

Coop, as usual, said a lot, but there was some decent advice under there. Aside from the simple way she'd freaked out at the mere concept fighting Angel, she would have done better if she'd brought her strength to bare. Angel was taller, but Blossom was reasonably sure she was stronger. Everything just happened so fast she hadn't been able to do anything with it. Also...

"I am never doing a cross-body block again." She smacked her forehead. Not sure what had been going through her head with that one. Not a proud moment. "But okay, let's hammer some stuff out and come up with some ideas. Like, looking back to what happened, where do you think you messed up? If we trained, how would you want me to help you?"

Coop put her hand to her chin and thought. "Hmm... well, I opened with that flying sidekick, and she dodged, and then kicked me in the head until I fell unconscsious, basically." She tilted her head to her side. What valuable information could she mine from this experience? "Maybe... maybe I should've opened with something else. Somethin' slightly less risky, or something? And I gotta get better at taking hits--she kept hitting me hard, and I couldn't see straight or, like, fight back. I need be able to, like, recover lightning quick from hits."

Sandalwood trails off, her smile having turned into a grumpy frown. "Damn, I didn't even hit her once! That really pisses me off--grargh, I need to waaayyy frickin' better next match..."

Blossom gave an eager nod, glad Coop was turning down the volume so they could have a conversation closer to ground level. She was fun, but exhausting. "That sounds about right. I mean," Hands up, palms forward. "I'm the one on the losing streak, so don't take me too seriously. But I do my best when I start slow. Bread and butter moves at the start, get a feel for things, then you get crazier when the fight move on. Things have a natural flow to them in the ring you have to learn to swing with them." She shifted about in her seat and did a little dance.

"We both have to start going harder. Way harder. Really turn it up in the gym, own it." She rubbed her hands together, working through a few details in her head.

"Yeah! Super hard. Hard like the nastiest, grungiest rock and roll song. Gunna be a modern day epic, lemme tell ya that much." Sandalwood returned her attention to her food, gobbling it down at a prodigious rate. Not bad. Throat tickly, like Blossom had said, so that was kind of disgusting, but the taste was OK. All in all, not a bad night. Not a bad night at all.

"You and me, we're gunna train the pants off this thing. And that's a promise!"

Blossom watched Cooper chow down, trying hard not to giggle too much. Things had seemed bad, but all in all, she couldn't complain too much with the way it had went. She fought a champion and made a friend. She'd had worse days, and life was looking a little less bleak. There were a lot of jerks in the AFW. Selfish, absorbed, conceited, shiftless. But good people, too. It was nice to meet another.

There was just one more thing to be done, then they could seal the deal.

Blossom raised up her hand and held it halfway cross the table. "High five?"

"Hell yeah!" Sandalwood half stood back, raised her arm up, and with the force of a mighty and angry god, high fived the shit out of that hand.

Fin.