Each and Every Step

"Yeah, okay, Rebecca. She's not here, right?"

That was the last thing Taylor needed. Or, more accurately, that was the last thing Adrian needed. A safety net, a way out. Protection. Taylor might as well just go home if Rebecca was going to show up, especially since last she heard, the giant gorilla wanted to murder her.

"Anyway, you're leg's still pretty fucked up. How soon is your match?" She asked. "It doesn't matter if you're healed up or not, you still have to win. You just have to think harder. You're pretty smart, ya know, but you just don't have balls. I can help you find some."

"No, no she's not." Adrian answered, not sure what Taylor was getting at, maybe she just didn't want to have to deal with her: even at the height of their feud, the two had never really met. And Rebecca was the type to generally hold grudges against people she viewed as dangerous to her precious Addy, yeah: it was probably better that she wasn't here.

"It's in a couple of week," she replied, trying to settle into a rhythm on the treadmill "I thought it was going to be as soon as I got cleared but it turns out I'm getting a few tune-up matches before hand. Mostly against people who like to win matches by knocking the other girl out so... yeah, I think my first match is against Li... something beginning with L or something." She answered, successfully managing to not fall over while answering questions this time. "W-what? what are you talking about!?" she asked, still staying on track.

Taylor had finally learned to expect this sort of reaction. She knew she wasn't the most delicate person in the world.

"Well, dude, something's wrong, right? I mean, you're like ten-and-two now, but all the matches you've won you've cheated and got lucky and shit. I'm not trying to tear you down or anything, but like, it seems to me like there's something that isn't working right. Confident fighters don't try to lie and cheat and take unfair advantages. Why would they? And what would it prove? Rebecca's been riding your nutsack for a long time, man, always right there to fight your battles if you let her. I'm sort of surprised you didn't just sic her on me before."

Taylor bumped the speed up a little on her treadmill and settled into her stride. "But like I said, I'm not trying to bust on you, man. You came to me for help, right? So you pick me because you know how warm and fuzzy I am. I promise I'm going to say what I mean and do what I can do fix this thing that's keeping you from being legit."

Once she was done talking, she felt really awkward. She hadn't actually talked to Adrian about what she wanted help doing, she'd sort of written that part in all on her own, so she wasn't sure if Adrian was even into it.

"Yeah." She said, just to fill the silence.

"Well I got ten wins! that's got to be like, beyond the realms of luck: fool me once and all..." Adrian defended her record but... Taylor had a point, she really had problems beleiving in her own wrestling abilities. Everyone now seemed to have 5 years experience with about 10 years martial arts training before that, some ultra secret trainer in a mountain side or just enough money to pay their way through any martial art without having to worry about having time to actually hold down a job for long enough to pay the 2 months overdue rent. And what did she have? 1 year in a Philly wrestling school, another year of bad matches on the indies and a bunch of old wrestling tapes for guidance.

She had picked up her bag of tricks when the difference between winning and losing was whether she got to eat that day and probably never got out of that mindset: take no chances, and do whatever it took to win. She got good at cheating, but probably was putting so much effort into making sure she won at whatever the cost that she had probably had neglected to develop her in-ring skills when she was just starting out, because she didn't want to starve, just for a learning experience.

She had tried to go straight before, and each time she either defaulted to her old tricks when things started to go wrong: or just flat out lost. With the matches getting suppossedly more important as her career progressed "So what do I do? I mean you said it yourself, I have to win. I go back and just lose, even if I fight fair... I'm just going to look like a chump because of it."

Taylor shrugged at Adrian with an inscrutable little smile. That was a good question.

"Whatever I say."

After taking Adrian through a lengthy but gentle warmup on the treadmill, she put her through an extensive set of stretches ranging from garden variety gym class stretching to yoga to contortionist partner stretches. She explained that she wanted to make sure she wasn't going to do any more harm to Adrian's bad leg than was absolutely necessary.

"But even if you've only got one leg, you still need to figure out how to win that match," she said. "With me, that thing with Heather, no one could've ever seen that coming. We both fucking beat her to death in that match, and I have no idea how she rolled out of the way, but I got hurt because I over-committed, but if I had to do it again, I'd probably do the same thing because you've got to have the balls to take chances like that. You just have to kinda try to make sure that the odds are in your favor when you do.

"Now, with Brittany..." She stared off into space while the match replayed in her head. "I was stupid. I was just going after her and I forgot to protect myself... You've got to take that shit into account, ya know, when you're fighting with cracked ribs don't give the other chick a chance to kick you in the fucking ribs. Right? The point is that I should've won that because I knew going in that my ribs were hurt. You can plan for that shit, and Brittany's a fucking retard. There's no way I couldn't have beat her if I didn't lose my shit. Stupidity is contagious, right?"

Adrian nodded along as she followed her latest trainer through every bit of the warm up exercises. Even just from the jogging and the stretches she was already starting to breathe heavy and feel tired. That last stretch shouldn't have even been physically possible for non-double-jointed people dammit! "Right, so it's not like I shouldn't be taking risks, I just got to make sure that they pay off." Adrian confirmed, taking most of her effort to try and not look obviously exhausted.

"Remember to protect myself and don't leave open obvious weaknesses... should I be taking notes?"

"Right, well, sort of, it's..." Taylor frowned and scratched the back of her neck in thought.

"Okay, it's like this," she said. "You've got you body, and you got your head. You need both of 'em, right? You gotta train your body, ya know, and get ripped and all athletic and stuff, and you gotta train your head. You've got to be tough. Unstoppable." she tapped her forehead with a finger. "If you don't have that, it doesn't matter what your body does. You're done.

"And then, like, you've got to think about how you do everything that you do. That's technique. Okay? And like... your feet. How you move, where you put your feet, where your weight is between them and where it is on your foot. Anticipate, plan your moves. You've got to get it up here before your feet can do shit. But then, you have to train the fuck out of it, every movement, until it just happens automatically and your brain can take the day off. That's skill. If you haven't thought things through, you're done, and if you're thinking about what your feet are doing while some crazy bitch is trying to kill you? Done."

She jogged back to the locker room and came out with her gym bag. She dropped it on the mats and fished out boxing gloves, one at a time, flinging the first two at Adrian and keeping the second pair for herself.

"You probably like the idea of punching me in the fucking face, right?" She grinned. "Good luck with that." She strapped on her gloves and swung her arms back and crossed them in front of her chest to stretch out her shoulders. She looked around to get a sense of how much mat space they had to work with, and then put a puffy, gloved hand on her hip while she waited for Adrian.

"C'mon. Hit me."

"Right... I think I get it..." Adrian said. What Taylor was saying made a degree of sense, she couldn't be thinking of everything at the same time: that was already dicking her over on the treadmill, just thinking about what her bad leg was doing was preventing her from getting up to speed. In a match the consequences would be that much worse then a quick stumble. But how was she supposed to develop that much in that short amount of time... okay she had a fair enough base to work on pre-injury, a lot of things came naturally to her that she probably could have done them in her sleep, but none of which helped against Natasha the first time, so she'd have to get better stuff and pretty much master them before the match.

"Huh?" Adrian let out when Taylor passed her the boxing gloves "Hey! I thought we were beyond that now," she protested the ida of really wanting to punch Taylor in the face. Yes her New Yawk accent was grating in the brief moments it came out, yes she couldn't go 5 minutes without insulting someone

... okay maybe she would like to punch her but still! Lack of faith much?

"Shouldn't we be wearing headgear for this?" She asked as she strapped on her gloves, boxing was new to er but she could kind of throw a punch. Trying to get a little lighter on her feet, she got in close for a fairly quick jab, trying just to make contact rather than put much force behind it.

"Nah, I won't hit you in the head."

Taylor kept her feet planted and pulled her head back and to the side and made Adrian's punch miss. She gave her a look.

"Come on, now. Put some effort into it. You don't need to try to murder me like you did with the chair, and that other time, but you're going to have to try."

She danced around Adrian, gliding easily across the mat while she circled, changed direction, moved in and out.

"I don't need headgear, because I'm Taylor Fucking Parker. Get it? You can't hit me, but even if I let you you definitely can't hurt me. I'm a tough motherfucker. You can hit me with a goddamn chair, but when I get up you're in big fucking trouble." She moved around Adrian erratically and quickly enough so as to make it difficult for her to even line up a good punch, grinning all the while.

"You're from Philly, right? What's Philly got? Are you a steak sandwich? Get the fuck out of here. Fuck Philly."

Adrian had a feeling that punch was gonna go wide, she hadn't really committed to it strongly enough to get the speed she needed, and it was a simple but none the less impressive dodge from Taylor to not get hit without having to make a step. She just didn't have to be an ass about it.

Trying to keep track of someone as fast as Taylor was difficult enough at the best of times, even just turning to keep a constant eye on her was frustrating: but what wasn't helping her concentration was the return of the Taylor of old, the constant stream of trash talk was visibly irritating the cosplayer, even as she made for forceful attempts to nail the ex-wrestler. "We got a football team in our own state, see: we don't have to borrow New Jersey's shit to make things work." She shot back, trying a strategy of trying to pre-empt Taylor, sending shots in a direction where she'd think Taylor would end up a millisecond later, trying the old Space Invaders strategy. Shooting where she was would just lead to her dodging it much easier.