Gonna Fly Now

It had been a while since Adrian Kytes' schedule had been this busy. Pretty much not since the Temple Games did she have as many things on-going. She had to face off against Reika in a match, had another one against Taylor scheduled for Summer Splash and in the mean time had to do these weird challenge things that Lukretia had thought was a good idea. Arm-wrestling, an Obstacle Course, and chess boxing: all of which had really started to get on her nerves during her own training. If she wanted to win them, and she did, she had to do training that was mostly outside her normal regimin. There was no real skill to Arm-wrestling, it was pretty much just strength, her main weakness in a lot of matches which meant a lot of upper body weight training ugh. Training for the obstacle course was fair enough but the Chess Boxing practice was just pissing her off for two reasons:

A: all she had for chess practice were computer programs, which were hard to predict for a rookie and cheated a lot, her record on the easiest difficulty was an embaressing 1 and 10 so far.

and B: She really didn't have anyone to spar with boxing-wise. Her initial idea to use the daughter of a former world-class heavyweight boxer, namely her amazonian girlfriend, had been shot down with the notion that she had pretty much been prevented from learning boxing by her dad. So all Rebecca could do was pretty basic, but powerful stuff... not really helpful for someone who had to rely on speed and technique rather than just steamrolling through everything with brute force.

Having had enough of challenge training, the former cosplayer wanted a change of pace. She still had the day set aside for training purposes but this time, as she stepped into the gym, just checking her phone to make sure she had gotten her own timing right in the message she sent to her potential training partner. 'Hey Cassie, wnt 2 spar @ Friction Gym, 10am?'

Cassie frowned down at the name on her phone. Before she even knew what it said, she was sure that it could only mean trouble for everyone. It was a lose-lose situation, like Dark Angel.

She creased her forehead and opened the text message, and then sighed heavily. Oh, Adrian. The typed out her message, and after she sent it she stayed put on the bench next to her locker to await Adrian's reply.

"I'm already there, but we should talk."

Adrian raised an eyebrow in confusion at Cassie's response. Not that the Canadian was already at the gym, that was probably to be expected. Half the company lived in the gym it seemed. What was surprising was that it read to be somewhat serious, she thought Cassie liked to grapple with people for fun/practice, what did she want to talk about- Oh. This was probably about the Taylor thing, yeah. Cassie and Taylor were best buddies and all, and the former cosplayer had been an asshole to Taylor ever since they got announced for a match at Summer Splash.

"Okay, trying to find you " title="Smile" />" Adrian typed out as she roamed around the facility, her finger hovering over the send button before she got a glimpse of the redhead sitting on one of the benches in front of the lockers. "Hiiii Cassie!" She called out, jogging towards the submission specialist with intent to wrap her up for a big hug.

Cassie untied her sneakers, tucked the laces inside them, and placed them neatly side by side in the bottom of her locker. She balled her socks and stuck them in the left shoe.She took off her sweatshirt and hung it on a hanger in the locker. She really wasn't looking forward to talking to Adrian.

She sighed. The panda with the umbrella on the front of her purple t-shirt looked happy enough, but her face didn't share his enthusiasm for this drizzly day. Her thighs were warm on the inside from the jog to the gym, but she brisk spring air and the light rain had left them chilly on the outside, and she rubbed her thighs vigorously to warm up her skin.

She looked up with a smile, and stood up accept the incoming hug. "Hi, Adrian," she said. "How have you been?"

"Hiyas!" Adrian let out as she wrapped the smaller woman up with her arms, reating her head on her shoulder. "I've been fine: busy, slightly stressed, annoyed at a lot of things but fine. How's everything? How was Canada? Snowy? I mean you went in winter time so there was probably what scientists would call an ass load of snow, sorry I couldn't come cheer you on at Avalanche, I kind of wanted to but I was doing my last bits of preperation for my match and I pobably would have been all like biting my nails or something. I knew you'd win though, but yeah that's[size=75:jf49dpai] probably dark stuff that [size=50:jf49dpai]might not be good to talk about. So what's up?" the former cosplayer said at a mile a minute pace, barely giving Cassie time to process any one part before moving on to the next topic.

Cassie gave Adrian a squeeze and patted the back of her head, and then separated. Eventually, Adrian finished talking.

"Home was so good," she said. "So, so good." That was about all she wanted to say about Dark Angel or Talia. "I saw your match on TV later. I was sad that you lost. You did a really good job, though. Really, I sort of just wanted Angel to lose..."

She looked Adrian in the eye. "I can't help you train, Adrian. Taylor's my best friend," she said sternly, but apologetically. She felt like she was either delivering bad news or administering a punishment or something. She didn't like it. "So... I can't help you train for that match. And... she's one of my training partners, so... I'm helping her train. To beat you."

"Yeah, I was kinda sad too. That I lost and all because that's pretty normal to feel when you lose your first main event but even so: I like to think that I kind of proved a point that I could hang in with the top girls. That I wasn't just some chump who lucked her way to Japan and could only cheat to win... it would have been better if I HAD won but still, I did pretty well for my first time." Adrian said with a soft smile, taking note how Cassie was yet another one of the people who would have liked to see Angel lose and that Adrian was the lesser of two evils at the time. Maybe what Angel said about making a lot of enemies at the top was true, even at the Q&A session there were people lamenting that Adrian wasn't the world champion by then. But then Cassie delivered the bad news, and Adrian responded in the only way she could.

"Come onnnn..." She whined, looking like a kid who had been told no ice cream on a hot summer's day. "Pleeease? It doesn't have to be specifically training to get me to win, I mean there's challenges which are really random so if we just do grappling then there's no-way I get something out of that for those and it's technically a distraction." The brunette pleaded with the Canadian. "I just wanted a break from studying chess and boxing and strength training for a day."

Cassie looked at Adrian like a mother considering her child's demands. She knew she had to stand firm, but... "Well..." Maybe there was some kind of middle ground.

"If you want to grapple, I guess we can, but I won't be a good training partner. I won't teach you anything. So... That'd be okay for me, but... fair warning, my jiu jitsu is so much better now. I feel like my four months at home in the gym really brought me to a new level with that." She thought for a moment, then added "I played a lot of chess, too. Me and my dad and my oldest brother Nicky like to play chess. It's just like jiu jitsu."

She slipped on a pair of flip flops and started for the door to the gym. "So I was going to work out, anyway. If you want to roll a little, we can do that. At least we could hang out for a while, I haven't seen you in so long!"

"Awesome!" Adrian let out, not really listening to what Cassie was saying. She kind of said yes to the grappling and that was all Adrian needed. "Wait, not awesome. I'm gonna get my ass handed to me aren't I?" she said, realizing that doing grapple sparring with someone as skilled as Cassie was going to probably be very one-sided. Especially if she'd gotten even better than the last time where she had completely chumped Adrian. That was over two years ago though so some progress had to be expected. "Well I'm not a complete chump on the mat either." She boasted "I've learned a few things, probably got nothing on you but... how long did I last the first time? like 10 seconds? I might be able to reach 15 this time." She said taking off her shoes and socks and placing them in her locker. "Maybe 20 if I'm lucky."

Cassie flip-flopped her way to the open mats and eased herself into a few yoga poses to limber up. "Well... yeah." There was no use denying it. Submission grappling was Cassie's whole life, and had been for her whole life. There was no way Adrian even stood a chance.

"We don't have to if you don't want to. I'm not going to be gentle if we do." She sat down cross-legged on the mat and faced the brunette. "So only if you're sure. We could definitely just go get a couple treadmills next to each other if you just want to hang out and stuff."