Match of the Millennium

Description: IT' pep rally time to get Team Frost back into the redline! Assuming, mind you, that Abigail can stop sobbing over his crashed truck and Juri doesn't kill all of them first!

[ABIGAIL]
Outside the ..still very damaged..Team Frost Headquarters:

"Noooooooo. NOOOOOOOOO. My-my-my vrrrr-oooooooom!!!"

It is said there are five stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression and Acceptance. It seems that Abigail has tripped at the finish line and has been stuck in depression for some time now as evidence by the roaring of his voice and engine warbling tones as he drapes dramatically across the hood of his .. lightly damaged .. monster truck in the aftermath of the flip over and crash that occured when he.. begrudingly .. made the decision to not just run over tumbling Buford by causing his own truck to crash.

He might as well have chopped off his own arm for his wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nevermind that the truck actually weathered the crash pretty well on account of his own tinkering and reinforcing. Barely dented and bruised as a testament to Abigail's own genius at such things. No, no, no...it's the thought that counts.

His Mad Gear companions just look on, scratching their heads in dismay and disapproval as if this is par for the course. "Boss, we can get it fixed right back up! You've got to let us get to work!" exhorts Axl.

"You're just keeping your teammates from concentrating you gorilla.." notes Roxy, lounging in a nearby chair, "We didn't fly all this way out from the shop for this!"

Abigail quiets his blubbering but continues laying across his trucks hood with all the drama of a closed casket funeral gone bad. "..Nooooooo... My..my vroooom."

"..Well..at least the fight was a draw?" offers Axl unhelpfully.

[JURI]
Juri, meanwhile, has been fuming on an entirely different basis.

"What a disgraceful performance." She mutters, laid back in her hammock and idly scrolling through her phone. Not a single victory. Her 'star pupil' completely outplayed. And one of her fellow sponsors reduced to a blubbering wreck thanks to the performance of the one HE wanted. Who had managed a draw, as though that were anything to be proud of.

Finally, she can take no more.

"Pull yourself TOGETHER already!" The irritable taekwonda shouts, before jumping from her hammock and walking over behind the splayed giant. Even draped across the hood of his truck, he towers over her. Not that this seems to factor into the way she talks to him in the least.

"You're an embarrassment." She says, folding her arms across her chest. "You hit one little pothole, get a tiny scratch in the paint, and now you hit the breaks completely? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of Speed King. Stop your weeping. Get off your knees. We've got a disappointment to whip into shape."

She tuts, sneers.

"A four pack of them, actually."

[BUFORD]
Buford, for his purposes, was asleep.

Well. Asleep was a very broad sense of the word. After he had been thrown from the bus, it would have been normal and routine to have taken the poor Canadian away to a hospital, where he would have received the best medical care available. Fortunately, Abigail and his friends were there to properly recover the ronin, and after a long and grueling task of bringing both the wreckage of Buford and the wreckage of the automobile, the half-naked swordsman was laid ceremoniously upon a workbench, the hilt of his blade held with both hands, crossed before his flabby, hairy chest.

Snoring an awful lot like a backfiring engine himself.

Buford was still awfully shredded from the aftermath of his fight, but quietly he dreams only the dreams of a true samurai. And while the snore was, well, quite loud, it at least made it clear he was alive. For now. It was hard to tell what was the greater miracle: the fact he didn't die from being sent right through the bottom of the bus, or that his shorts somehow managed to survive well enough that he wasn't hanging out commando style here. Buford suddenly and dramatically grimaces in his slumber as Juri declares something about whipping.

And proceeds to scratch an itch somewhere around his loins in his sleep.

[ABIGAIL]
Well his pick -did- draw where the others lost. Something of a the team carry it seems. But this fact isn't lost on him even if it's seen through a haze of befuddled tears and mourning.

"The Chief -REALLY- loves his truck. You should see him when we borrow it and he forgets he gave the okay and thinks someone stole it. Just a trail of bodies..." Two-P attempts to explain helfpully, talking to Juri as if forgetting that he's not in Metro City and so re-spawn rates are likely not as high out here, in technically enemy territory.

"SHUT UP!" roars Abigail, intervening in his own way less Juri round on his employee. "It's NOT LIKE THAT!"

Nevertheless, he seems to have finally begun the process of reaching the end of the fourth stage of grief and Juri's words do knock some sense into him.

"FINE. Look it's not my fault they lost. I gave roaring motivational speeches that should pushed them past the redline!" He sniffs and rubs the back of his nose, "..I guess we're going to need some serious nitro.."

He shakes his head, jowls wobbling like the junkyard dog his face mimics as he tries to throw off the last of his lethargy, "..And I am NOT AN EMBARESSEMENT!" he roars at Juri. The fact that the Speed King song is now firing up in the back of his head is helping as well. Looks like she did it.

"Dammit. Wake him up!" he yells at the other Mad Gear. "And where the hell are his clothes! I thought his momma had sent that package already!"

"You're up." says Roxy, nose wrinkling as she eyes Buford and looks at Axl. "Fine." grumbles Axl..promptly walking over to Buford's bench and then kicking it roughly.

[AYALA]
Ayala, to her credit, has sprung back from the otherwise demoralizing defeat by Hawksley (and whatever training was heaped on her in response) and has gotten back on the horse, and is doing some training practicing with punches and kicks on the punching bags and dummies here and there--which probably isn't so great for letting Buford sleep. To be fair she might have noticed he was there, instead mistaking him for a pile of laundry or the like. She wasn't used to seeing people his size--not many people were overweight on the Expanse. Perhaps once in a while she'd wrinkle her nose and sniff at the air as he rolled around and scratched in his sleep, though--what else could smell exactly like cheetos and /despair/?

"Boss, boss--round bear got into store!" Ayala jumps up as Abigail enters, apparently trying to warn him as he probably hasn't seen Buford lying on the workbench.

[JURI]
"Hey. Pee Boy." Juri says, her eye swiveling towards the Mad Gear assistant. "Don't forget the most important rule of surviving Metro City. You and the other flunkies? Don't talk to me."

There was a part of her - quite a large part, in fact - that missed the freedom she had to brutalise (and worse) the low-level Shadaloo grunts. But she has done an admirable (... kind of...) job not hurting Abigail's help. Mostly because they have the sense to leave her well enough alone. Now that her impromptu motivational speech has gotten the behemoth back on his feet, though, she gives a sharp nod.

"That's more like it." She says, "And you're right. It ISN'T your fault. Let's face it, our training hasn't exactly been rigorous."

She shoots Ayala an appraising look, and then steps into the centre of the warehouse. She takes a deep breath. It has been a while since she did anything this strenuous herself, though she doesn't want to admit it.

"HERE. NOW."

And as she bellows her command, she lets her power flow out of her. There's a faint purple shimmer around the woman; but far more intense is the wave of raw ~emotion~ that flows out of her. All at once, pouty, annoyed, sarcastic teen is... well, she's a monster. A killer. The Apex Predator to end all Apex Predators. Her lust for violence is thick on the air; her sadism made manifest.

If Buford was primed to dream of whips before, well. That's going to be a hell of a nightmare.

[BUFORD]
Buford smacks his lips, well attuned to someone kicking his bed disappointingly being a normal means of rousing him.

"What... Brian Storm?" He mutters, looking over. He moans loudly, as he struggles to lift himself up. Squinting at Axl, he looks at Roxy, and smiles. He then looks at ABigail, and blearily babbles aloud. "The last I remembered, I remember.... AMERICANS" He states sternly, as he very gingerly swings his legs over. He looks around, as someone talks about a bear. Squinting around, he appraises the blurry figures in the room. It seems he lost his glasses. "Sensai," Buford begins, squinting his eyes at the remains of the truck. And then, it dawns on him. "I think your truck had an accident. WEre you drinking liquor?" He smirks, rolling his eyes as he looks first toward Ayala. "Or maybe you let the cave woman drive it-"

He is interrupted when Juri suddenly gives the order.

Buford yelps as he instinctively slides off the workbench. Ideally, he would be walking to Juri on command, but his legs don't seem to be actually all that good at walking. Collapsing into a heap on the ground, he drops his hilt, and begins to flail his arms to try and pull himself in Juri's general direction. "Ah! Ah! Coming, M'lady, I am coming as fast as I can!" He whimpers, as he flounders on the floor. RHe does not actually come towards Juri, despite his efforts. Exhausted by the brief attempt at moving, a thought reaches him. "Oh, ah, Miss Juri," He begins, "I know English must be your second language and it's easy to get confused with Western Cities, but don't you mean the most imporant rule of surviving Sunshine City?

Buford chuckles on the ground, as he gathers his second wind.

[ABIGAIL]
It's a withering glance that just sort of says 'I told you so' with all the volume of a full Death Metal concert in full effect. Two-P shrinks back away from Juri rapidly and then seems to almost wilt into oblivion under the weight of Abigail's gaze. Roxy ..says nothing. Clearly the smartest of the gathered trio. She's not about to get her makeup ruined over this.

"Is it possible? Is this guy -more- annoying then -Katana-?" muses Axl in mild shock and awe as he listens to Buford and watches as the Canadian Samurai begins to wobble back to life.

"Get 'im one of Bill's tee-shirts!" orders Abigail, ignoring everything else for now though he gives Ayala a quick, appraising and..what's that...approving glance. Seemingly pleased she'd been putting in the work. As to Buford, Two-P tosses a large jacket and tee-shirt with Mad Gear iconography on it over towards Abigail, who snatches it out of the air without looking. It seems he -did- think somewhat ahead, Bill Bull being one of the more portly of Mad Gears' associates and actually a few steps larger then Buford. He can't do anything about the glasses though. "Here." he begins, approaching, "Put these on. Now."

And then he freezes as Buford addresses Juri..and he sighs and pauses and just reaches up to pinch his nose while muttering under his breath rapidly, "..Please don't kill 'im, he's the only who didn't flatly lose last round... Don't kill 'im."

[AYALA]
ppCollectively, when Juri raises her voice, a lot of the henchman and Ayala included all sort of have a reaction like a cat being faced down by a giant timberwolf, hair standing on end--and even the sabrecat tail of Ayala's scarf, somehow. Scary twin-tailed woman was angry, and yelling! This was bad! Was equally bad when scary twin-tailed lady was /grinning/, Ayala knew--she was cavewoman, but not born yesterday. Juri exuded /danger/.

There is an almost cartoon like ziiiiip sort of sound effect as Ayala speeds to get before her. Buford is not ignored, though from what Ayala has seen--he might not exist for much longer, if he really just tried to shittalk Juri like that. Ayala probably met him before, but for reasons she did not understand had only vague recollection there was supposed to be someone like that on the team.

She stays quiet for the brief moment, though, not wanting to attract the spider's attention.

[JURI]
A lot of people would take pity on Buford. Even with all his many flaws, it is obvious that the guy is barely hanging on. Seeing him crawl, broken, towards her... actually improves Juri's mood considerably, though. If there was one thing she enjoyed, and there may very well just be one thing, it was seeing the humiliation and pain of others put in front of her.

She takes three paces towards him, and then her foot is nudging beneath his chin, lifting his gaze to look her in that one, terrifying eye. They'd been kept separate before; probably to avoid precisely this kind of interaction. Now, though, there's no stopping it. Juri grins down at him, in the same way a cat grins at a mouse caught between its paws.

"No. See, Pee Boy is going to go home, eventually. We need him here. We DON'T need him there. And if he doesn't want me to kill him in front of his family, he'll REMEMBER the rule. Just like you're going to remember YOUR number one rule. When I tell you to do something? You DO it."

In a sudden blur, her 'supportive' foot is twisting around, catching the man in his bulk and lifting him bodily into the air, only to twist, and bring him down HARD on the other side of her. If all goes according to plan? He'll land right on his feet. Which may or may not be an intensely painful experience depending on just how injured those legs of his actually are.

Before heel-kicking him towards the offered clothing.

"I'm not going to kill him." She says, to Abigail. "Yet. Trust me. I know how much punishment a human body can take."

Which is true. The sadist DOES have a very good sense for how much pain can safely (and unsafely) be inflicted. He SHOULDN'T even black out.

Probably.

Not for long, anyway.

[ABIGAIL]
Well that's a relief. He -really- wasn't sure there.

Which probably means in Juri's shoes -he- might have tried to kill Buford perhaps.. so her show of restraint is quite impressive.

Buford would slam right into Abigail's outstretched hand. The immovable object to what would have been an unstoppable force given Buford's momentum and size accented by the force of Juri's delivery. His strength then surges to hold the other canadian upright and give him a chance to avoid falling back down if he would do so.. and yet..

"Stop bein's o dramatic, Buford. I -know- you're tougher then you're acting. You were sleepin' like a baby. Look, that road rash's already going away. But don't push your luck with Juri. I aint gonna always be here to be the 'good cop' to this routine.." he grumbles at him.

"Now here - put these on and get some spare glasses so you can see! I don't want you slashing my tires cause you can't see where you're swinging yer sword!"

If Buford stays upright or not, Abigail releases him and lets him to deal with the offered shirt and jacket or no and steps away to walk towards Ayala, "I meant to make it to yer match as well." He offers towards her, "I guess you go a fan though. Got that ogre crushin' on ya."

[AYALA]
Ayala and some of the goons collectively go 'Ooooh' in a grimacing sort of way, watching the brutal assault that's dealt to Buford. In some ways Ayala being a cavewoman is good--she doesn't understand how to file a police report. Yet. Or that they exist. That too.

"Boss want Ayala to help big man?" the cavelady leaned over and held a hand out near her mouth to holler towards Abigail, leaning tentatively, since she was still trying to keep a bit of a low-profile. "He look hurt... and kinda folded..." is that sympathy in Ayala's voice? After what just happened to Buford? Yes. Yes it is. She's also trying to make herself useful after the performance she just had in the tournament, of course, that might also be it.

[JURI]
"No helping him." Juri says, sharply, to Ayala. "He can figure out how to obey himself or he can spend the rest of the tournament as my stress toy. I don't really care which."

She cracks her neck as she observes the blonde. The aura remains around Juri; a constant background hum of menace that sings out of her. It's annoying, but she had to grudgingly admit that the cavewoman - someone she had been very skeptical of before - was at least trying to apply herself. More than could be said for her teammates. She'd been training whilst Juri had been lounging and Abigail had been sobbing. There's willing, there. Which is something to work with.

"Now. I hope you remember most of that fight. You got hit in the head a bunch. But, other than being blind, stinking drunk when you got into the ring, where would YOU say you went wrong?"

[ABIGAIL]
"He'll be fiiiine." concurs Abigail as he steps away from Buford to let the man recover from the rough treatment and deal with the clothes as he sees fit.

"C'mon..gonna be rougher treatment then that in the matches."

And the guy did get knocked through a bus, down the road and nearly rolled over by a monster truck and here he is, running his mouth at Juri. They've got a team of fighters, that's for sure.

He reaches out to lean against the side of his damaged truck as he listens, waiting for Ayala to answer Juri.

A quick glance is given to his truck and the tears look ready to start welling up again but he shakes it off and looks back towards the warehouse and the two infront of it with only a mournful soundintg, "--vrooom-.." to offer him comfort.

[AYALA]
Ayala freezes in place in mid-step as Juri ordered her to leave Buford where he was. That ran the stake into /that/ idea's heart, it would appear.

"Uhh... Ayala wasn't /that/ drunk--" she had been starting to say, before she corrected herself. "I did not wait and see what my opponent would do--Ayala did not position herself better to land blow on opponent..." she said with a sigh, looking down even. She /was/ sorry too, and she /meant/ it. With Juri, she /better/.

[JURI]
Juri shakes her head slightly, and allows the menacing aura to die away. She rubs her face. This sort of thing really isn't where she excels. But the frustrating part of her psychic prowess - especially now that most of it IS her prowess and the Feng Shui Engine is more... locked away - is that she can feel the sincerity in the woman. It makes her a bit nauseous, actually. Part of her REALLY wants to beat that out of her.

But she doesn't.

"Look." She says, "You didn't have perfect positioning or any of that crap. True. You're a novice. Learning space and seeing holes in guards is really something you can only learn from experience. You'll figure that out."

Is she... actually being encouraging?

"The mistake was when you let the pressure OFF." She says, "He got you in that headlock, smacked you around, you took a second to get your bearings. What you should have done is go right back at him. You lost your momentum. Understand?"

[ABIGAIL]
"You gotta know when to keep hitting the accelerator."

Abigail's deep voice rumbles in from the background ..nevermind the fact that Ayala probably has no idea what any of the car references mean.

"Keep pushing and going faster and harder." He adds as a bit of clarification even if not exactly meaning to.

He runs a finger along the roof of his truck, picking up some dust and examining it with all the appraising eye of a military task master as he continues,

"You're strong and you've got talent at explosive acts of speed and ferocity so you need to learn how to pace and leverage that better against someone like Hawksley who is gonna come in hitting hard as well.. Hm..whose her next match against?"

"Chevy." offers Roxy helpfully while looking over her phone.

Abigail freezes in place.

[AYALA]
The cavelady is able to suck in a deep breath and nod a bit, able to loosen up a little, which perhaps makes Juri a bit more relaxed too, she hopes. Ayala looks up at her and listens, tilting her head as to better hear her, body language that indicates she is following along, at least.

"Ayala didn't know how to use abilities fully yet on humans, still used to beast," she admits. "She will train harder," she also still refers to herself in the third person, which is probably another thing that begs to be beaten out of her, in anycase~

"Yes!" she straightened up again and nearly jumped up in place in affirmation, at being told she lost her momentum. She still doesn't relax totally, of course, she still fears.

"Yeah, frail girl," Ayala nods, at the mention of Chevy, apparently Ayala had already found out about the next match.

[JURI]
Juri actually grins at that. Chevy vs Ayala. Now that's going to be an interesting match. The fighter the Big Guy had hoped for, and the one the pair had been developing the best rapport with of the crop they got instead. "Oh, that's rich." She purrs, "Pig Girl is probably gonna be tougher than you expect. She wrestles hogs for fun. I wouldn't count on a quick KO against her..."

As she talks, she's now absently looking the woman up and down, pursuing her lips in thought. "She's a water-user too. You've got that lightning trick, though. That could be handy. But she's good at turning momentum against people. My advice? Practice what we just told you. Go in fast. Keep up theh pressure. Don't give her time to think. What do you think, Big Guy? That sound like your read on it if you were in our girl's shoes?"

[ABIGAIL]
"..Yeah.."

It's a slow yeah as if he's waking up from some sort of haze. The disappointment that he'd lost Chevy was..quite noticable but life moves on and yet it's almost as if he hadn't considered that his team's picks would end up going up against the one he'd been building a rapport with.

But business is business and more then potential friendships: Abigail doesn't like to lose.

"Yeah." He says again, "She's gonna be slippier then you think and since she's all about wrestling she's gonna be tryign to out manuever you and slip around you and keep you from getting hold of her in turn and try and use your momentum against you. You're gonna to have to study her movements and keep trying to cut her off and keep her guessing at which direction you're going to come at her from so she can't get a read on you and block you and then wrap you up."

[AYALA]
"Yeah, Ayala will do her best," she quickly nodded her head again, finally falling to a more casual stance, than the completely straight-backed one she had been standing at attention in before. "Back home, Ayala tried to fight so she wouldn't get tired, guess she need to go harder," she rubbed a hand against the back of her head, heeding the advice from both Abigail and Juri, fingers smoothing out some of the blonde curls she had that were mussed during the fearful excitement.

"Also, what happened to boss man's truck?" she gestured her chin at the way the vehicle was all busted up like that. She hadn't seen what befell it, apparently.

[JURI]
Juri leans in a little closer as Ayala starts to relax. "I'm not interested in you doing your best." She purrs. "I'm interested in you winning. Right now, we're the laughing stock of the whole tournament. And I. Don't like. Being made a joke."

And then she's stepping back, waving her hand above her head loosely. "I'm gonna go take out my bad mood on some of the local punks." She declares, cheerfully. "Just keep in mind. If you don't win your next fight, I'm going to fight you myself. Then we'll see if we can't jam some lessons through that thick skull of yours."

She saunters towards the entrance of the warehouse. "Tell the Poutine Samurai the same thing, if he can get himself dressed. Oh. And remind him that I'm only not allowed to kill him whilst we're on the same team." That thought brings an ~audible~ smile into her voice.

"If he keeps this up, I'll just have my FUN when the cameras aren't running any more."

[ABIGAIL]
"You aint gonna get me dragged into no lawsuit, Juri! I got a legit business I'm running!"

That seems to be about the extent of Abigail's defensive shield to the team members against Juri's threat as she begins to saunter off.

He glances back over to Ayala..and actually 'winks' at her and offers a mildly lopsided smile. Seems the Mad Gear chief has a heart after all.

"Let's see what you got." he says, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the training dummies as he moves closer in, seemingly switching places with Juri as she wanders off.

Log created on 16:12:14 06/28/2023 by Abigail, and last modified on 08:57:37 06/29/2023.