Description: Life has not been kind to Varvara, blessed with neither stunning good looks nor an attractive personality. She's had to make her way in this world with her fists and picking her meals from the trash, but the violence-driven, self-centred lifestyle now no longer serves her, not when everything is going to hell in a hand-basket. Without any purpose or direction, Varvara joins in the last of the looting of waterlogged Metro City, if only to gather enough food to survive for one more day. Enter Tabitha, an unlikely hero and recovering from the narrow defeat she had suffered in the Gaia Tournament. Seeing something of herself in Varvara, she decides that it is time to set things right. Beating sense into other people always works, doesn't it? If you disagree, you smell.
Metro City's Uptown. If there's anything left in the city to take, as everything starts to drown underwater, disintegrate under intense wind shear, or what have you? This is one of the last places to do it.
Over the crisis, just about everywhere else has been picked clean. Anything that was left behind was already waterlogged into uselessness, stolen, or otherwise reclaimed in the name of ongoing evacuation, relief, or whatever else. All that's left is water, garbage, death, and despair.
Uptown still has a number of holdouts, owing to being on a somewhat higher elevation than most of the city. Some parts of the rich part of the city aren't completely dunked under yet. Some of the really crazy folk might even think they can wait out the potential complete and utter annihilation of Metro City. For the most part, this has not been true.
Even being the rich parts of town and having state-of-the-art homes with the latest architecture meant to survive natural disaster, there is a lot of ruin in the wake of the hurricane that hit. One would have to be desperate to still even want to risk going outside to traverse all the way here in hopes that some of the rich idiots still have something.
Like... food.
Such are the hopes of one thug who has illegally entered the country several times over in recent years. Injured, alone, and no longer certain that her previous employer Mr. Burr is going to magically show up to take her to that buffet he promised (there is no longer any such thing open in Metro)... the hunger gnaws at her, running on fumes to follow other such lowlives and desperate people to pick through the ruins of places where the water level hasn't yet completely submerged them.
She stomps through a muddy yard of a three-story house with a four-car garage that lost its roof yesterday, with no sign of anyone hiding within. Her clothing is threadbare, torn in places from knife attack, and - as just about always - dirty, dirty, dirty.
The storm has hit a cycle of calm, but the name is misleading. The wind is still violent, threatening to hurl debris and bodies around at a moment's notice (or sometimes not even that). Cold rain continues to pound with the force of tiny arrows. There always remains the risk there's someone inside that house, armed with a gun to ward off anyone who might wander too close on their watch. The sky is a very dark gray, blotting out much of the sunlight that could come through... if it's even still day.
It's dark, it's damp, it's dreary - just like another day in Metro. For Varvara, it feels like any passing hour could be one of her last as she frantically moves to claim an overturned trash can that drifts down the gutters, as though on the vain hope there might be something in there.
It's not a heartwarming sight for anyone involved, but in her case it is probably not entirely undeserved...
Tabitha has not exactly had a good week herself. Or two weeks, really; it's been a long time since her last official match, and here she is, trapped in Metro City with nowhere to go. Planes aren't going to take off in a storm like this, but even if they were - she has family here. She's not going to abandon them.
Tabitha's family is not an uptown family. She has little reason to be up here herself, except for two reasons. One is the same practical reason as Varvara, if perhaps not quite as urgent yet: the stores here are some of the few left with items and enough security to have not lost them all.
The second is that, however awkwardly and accidentally, Tabitha has found herself as one of the few people trying to keep order in Metro City.
She never really intended to do so. She's from the lower areas of the city herself and does not consider herself important, or even particuarly relevant, to the functioning of the city. But the poorer people have almost nobody left between riots and disaster, and it's starting to get that way even up here. Haggar can't be everywhere, and a natural disaster's chaos is more spread out than a gang.
So she's trying to help, however she can. Sometimes this means stopping thieves. Other times it just means doing what she can to support others. She's not sure which it is this time when she sees a particularly dirty figure head toward a roofless structure, pausing at the garbage can. Tabitha hunkers down from the wind (it doesn't help) and heads in that direction.
The dirty figure lifts up the trash can. For her efforts, muddy water splashes out of what is an otherwise empty container that may have once held the much-beloved full turkey dinners that seem to keep being thrown away intact. A former testament to a society so prosperous it would readily waste away such delicacies out of sheer whimsy.
Those days are gone, and in its place, want. It's all that seems to have ever driven that figure - male? Their physique is so overly developed it's hard to tell at a distance with the haze left behind by the precipitation.
With a loud roar of frustration that cuts over the ambience of pounding rain, the trash can is hurled into the middle of the road. The dirty figure clutches their head in both hands for a short while, standing where they are. Disappointment. Despair. This is clearly not someone who is reacting positively to news about some local sports team winning an unlikely game months after the fact.
This is the face of someone so desperate they are largely abandoning reason as they charge up the driveway with some other yell, drawing a fist back to pound at a garage door. Then again. Then again.
This is clearly not the resident of this home. An invader...? Someone who does not belong.
But someone who appears to suffer, all the same.
Tabitha can't make out everything at a distance, but she gets at least some of it. She understands, to an extent, the rage and frustration - she's felt them too, although perhaps not quite the same way or to the same level. She's been desperate, although not perhaps /that/ desperate, not really.
Tabitha accelerates. She doesn't make perfect time in this mess but she makes pretty good speed across the street; she vaults a pothole and the huge puddle in and around it, lands, slides past a manhole and keeps going, barely stopping as she steps up onto the curb. She's getting closer to Varvara, and some details become clearer.
At the moment, Tabitha is wearing what looks like a cheap raincoat that covers down to her (bare) shins. Even half under the hood, her hair is plastered down on her face; no pretty locks today, she looks as wet and bedraggled as pretty much anyone else out in this mess. Her feet are also pounding as she keeps running toward Varvara.
"Hey, hey!" she calls, as she approaches. It is hard to tell if she's being friendly - the downpour drowns out some of the fine detail in her voice, and she doesn't know Varvara (or vice versa). "There's no call for that, even in this mess!" She expects kind of a poor reaction, which is why she slows down as she comes up the driveway, blue-grey eyes narrowed against the storm.
The thin steel material that makes up the garage door buckles and dents with every punch. Whoever this is, they want in. They don't seem particularly choosy about how they get in. They just want in. A place where they do not belong (granted, no one belongs outside in this kind of weather.)
There's a crack of thunder in the distance, but it does little to drown out the sheer fury of whoever that is pounding away at the garage door.
"SHUT UP!"
Hell of a set of lungs, or maybe one desperately pitched scream. It at least sounds (vaguely) feminine.
She doesn't appear to quite make it in busting down the garage door, as she falls to her knees and slumps forward, arms pushed up against the garage door that has dented, but not buckled, to her assault. She has guaranteed that this garage door will probably never be able to fully open again to let a car in or out, ever.
"I will not," is Tabitha's immediate response. Closer to, she doesn't look like the happy, friendly boxer she often is before a scheduled match, when she's prepared for violence; she looks honestly upset. She's seen looters before. It takes her a few moments longer to determined Varvara is a girl than someone hunting for an entrance.
"Even if you're desperate," Tabitha says, "there are much better ways than punching your way into someone's home! Even if you're angry - I mean, who wouldn't be with everything going on? There's no excuse for something like this."
Tabitha reaches past Varvara, planting her hand on the dented part of the door. She can't just un-dent it, of course; maybe if she was on the other side she could smash it more or less flat, but she can't get there and wouldn't try even if she could. "I don't know who you are or anything like that, but there are much better things you could be doing with that kind of spirit. Even if you don't want to help anyone else, just..."
Tabitha runs out of words. She kind of stumbles to a halt. "Anyway, quit it, okay? Please?"
It's not easy to say if the person - if there's really much of a person, there, they looks more like a complete emotional wreck just barely clinging to the fundamentals of the ability to communicate and understand the feelings and desires of others - is actually doing much listening as their fists unclench, laying those palms against the wet, dented garage door.
Her forehead rests against it, though it collides with it at a speed that suggests the intent to headbutt her way through. Except that it's really only done once, and the forehead never disengaged from it. Another self-destructive behavior, among many that might be realistically inferred just looking at them. Poor hygiene (which is probably not as easy to gauge when everyone who is out here gets dirty, fast), certain performance enhancers of highly obvious physical effect... etc, etc.
She is politely asked, ultimately, to quit it.
She pulls herself up to her feet, head drooped low, soaked hair covering much of her face from view, until she faces her. Even then, only one of those eyes is visible.
It's unfocused. Tired. But there's something else there that makes her look that much more uninviting, unapproachable. It's not rare to see something like it in close fights with worthy opponents who are in it to win. Some sort of longing, or desire, for something. Sizing up whoever or whatever's in front of them as though running through the ideas as to how one may accomplish what they seek out.
This goes a step beyond that, as she takes a single, very quick, sudden step towards Tabitha, both arms raised upwards. Something she can immediately take as a threat.
"This one's MINE," she sneers out, as though a toddler who cannot comprehend the higher reasoning as to why doing what they are is bad, palms faced outward as she clumsily shoves them outward towards Tabitha to push her away, "I'm not, I'm not... letting..."
She spits a word out that's lost to the storms, but that shove alone should be communicative of just about everything that needs to be. She does not appear to see the young woman as a potential means of help, or anything of the sort.
An obstacle. An obstruction. Something merely in the way of what she wants. The sort of person seemingly willing to go all the way to finally get it, up to and including... well, probably well beyond just that first shove.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha dodges Varvara's Weakened Fast Throw.
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Varvara 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Tabitha
Tabitha was expecting, perhaps, some kind of attack. Maybe not that particular one, but she kind of accidentally (or intentionally?) prodded the other woman into action, and against more than just the doorway. She doesn't know anything about Varvara beyond what she can see, but there's some knowledge there for people who can read it.
Especially the look in the eye. That's something Tabitha knows /very/ well. If she had ever fought near a mirror, she'd have seen it there, too.
The clumsy shove is dealt with quickly, by Tabitha stepping backwards - more than one step, almost a shuffling motion that takes her out of reach unless Varvara chooses to follow her. Which she can do; Tabitha isn't stopping her. Rather the opposite, in fact; her stance is challenging, not quite aggressive but close. Better to give her a target that isn't herself - not that Tabitha thinks of it in those terms. She just sees fighting spirit, battered but - maybe - not broken.
"And /I'm/ not letting you bash the door open with your head!" Tabitha doesn't have her handwraps on. She momentarily misses them, flexing her fingers and shifting her bare hands; she knows how to fight without them, too. There was a time when she couldn't really afford them. "It's not yours. Look, if there's ever a time when everybody needs to stick together, this is it! If you want to take it out on someone, pick me, but leave the houses alone!"
Tabitha attacks. She is not sure how dangerous, or how powerful, Varvara is; she looks strong (she's bulkier than Tabitha is, for sure) but strength doesn't always correspond with trained skill or natural talent. She lets loose a single fast jab, almost blindingly fast but nowhere near the force that Tabitha can put out with one of her power punches. It's one step up from a taunt, a challenging strike to go with her challenging posture, and she knows it - and she thinks Varvara might know it, too.
COMBATSYS: Varvara endures Tabitha's Jab Punch.
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Varvara 0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0 Tabitha
Varvara overly commits into the shove, stumbling forward as Tabitha takes a step back. Tabitha might need to take another step or two back to maintain some semblance of personal space, but at least she doesn't seem to be trying to reach out and shove or something again.
Yet.
She doesn't even really look Tabitha in the face so much as she protests the idea of headbutting the door - or trying to pull together, everyone.
"Bull," she sneers, though it's hard to hear that single syllable above the weather. She starts to swing a fist, but Tabitha beats her to the very literal punch, her head turning slightly to the quick, succinct jab as opposed to Varvara's far less direct, more wide, wild swing.
It's not hard to see why that difference exists. The shakiness in her legs. Even her hands are shaking. There is no real focus in her eyes. Based on her physique there is no way she can be anything but a trained fighter of some stripe... but the weakness is all too apparent. It probably colors a bit more on why she's so desperate to get inside.
It further elucidates why she keeps trying to swing those punches, almost rapid-fire were it not for some pauses in between swings - slowed slightly but ultimately not outright deterred from doing so.
"Ev'ryone else," she slurs, "who cares... 'm starving," she groans out, unable to both talk with much clarity nor diction in between those punches that may have once been part of a more coherent, tight technique.
Now, it's straight-up flailing.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha blocks Varvara's Weakened Binding Seeds.
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Varvara 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Tabitha
Tabitha is okay with continuing her retreat out of Varvara's shove range. There's a fair amount of driveway for her to back down, after all, and if she really has to she can go on the road - it's not like there are many cars around here right now.
Varvara keeps swinging, and Tabitha keeps taking it. She doesn't even really strike back for a few moments, simply letting her palms absorb the force. She feels it tingle a little bit every time she does so; she might be a little weakened, but Varvara still has a lot of strength in her arms.
"...I know," Tabitha says. She feels almost guilty. "But so are they, in there, maybe - or if not them, the next one over, or the one after that. It's hard. It's hard for everyone, and that's why we have to hold together." Tabitha keeps her defensive posture, eyeing the other woman carefully. It's a calculated look, a careful eye - still competitive.
"You've got spirit. Pull yourself together! You can be better than a looter - and you can still be fed," Tabitha says, though she's not entirely sure how she'll manage that. Her family probably cannot stretch to another no matter how much she wishes she could - she could have if she'd won the tournament match she'd been in, but she hadn't and there's no point beating herself up over it.
Her position is not quite defensive, not quite offensive - something that she'd use while waiting in the corner just as a match was about to start. The fact that she's getting poured on is kind of not helping her focus, but she tries.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha focuses on her next action.
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Varvara 0/-------/-------|===----\-------\0 Tabitha
Is it really spirit? Could it just simply be someone attempting to expend what energy reserves they have left in one final, primal expression of violence for the sake of tending to the very basic necessities to continue living? As Tabitha may size her up more, she may notice the gashes on one side of her body... doubtless other scars around herself, too.
She's wounded. She's been wounded, and probably has not been able to seek any sort of treatment for them in this crisis. Yet, here she is, still wandering around, being the same sort of ruffian that has endlessly plagued Metro for countless years, for all this time still thinking of herself, and her needs.
Can that really be expected to change, if that's worked for her so far?
...Has it?
"Better," that's not a question mark, or something asking for clarification, as she staggers about in the wake of throwing all those punches... stopping perhaps only because of the limitations of what her tired muscles can take, what oxygen her lungs can take in when her body feels like it wants to start cannibalizing itself for nutrients.
If it hasn't already.
"I ain't nothing better," that should be an exclamation mark, given the look in her eyes screams some kind of defiance, but she doesn't quite manage it as she starts to circle about Tabitha, slipping every three steps or so due to the slick asphalt. To say nothing about how she trips about when stepping back out into the mud of the drenched lawn when going there is part of the whole circling aspect.
"That's who I am," she continues, "I gotta eat, don't... don't care how I take it, I gotta be strong enough to... I don't care!" There we go, exclamation mark. "There ain't another place," she moves to wrap an arm around Tabitha's head, to bow her down as she draws back a fist, "for no one like me."
It's probably the most coherent thing she's said so far, and that might be the peak of it, as she draws back a hand to palm her in the face while she may or may not be caught in that headlock with a tired, awful quiet shout.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha dodges Varvara's Weakened Minotaur Slayer.
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Varvara 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Tabitha
The slippery ground is why Tabitha is no longer moving around too much. She's more stable - much more stable - when she doesn't have to, when she lets Varvara come to her instead. It's part of her usual techniques, but here it's for more reasons than just the one.
Tabitha has seen some people like Varvara before. Desperate, wanting. Generally you have to find a way through to them before they're willing to think about it. Unfortunately Tabitha is a relatively simple sort and has never had opportunities to practice her approach. She only has one.
Fortunately, it seems like it might be a decent option this time.
"You're really putting yourself down," Tabitha says, taking stock of the injuries old and new. She's scarred, too, so this is nothing new. "Maybe you haven't been before, but you /can/ be. What's your name? I feel really dumb talking to you without using it - !" The last exclamation was interrupted by Varvara's attempted headlock. Tabitha knows a bit about headlocks (she doesn't like being in them) and slips backwards again, a more technical boxing maneuver than she often uses in street fighting, when she has other options. She manages to keep her feet under her on the slanted driveway when she does it, though it's a near thing.
"You want to be strong," Tabitha half-says, half-asks. "Who doesn't. But there's more to strength than just taking what you want or need. I'm not going to let you hurt someone /else/ to take it, either - if you want to loot, you'll have to deal with me!" Tabitha has already made a decision - no matter what, Varvara is going to get fed after this, even if she has to give up some of her own for it.
But she can't break a fight for food (she doesn't have it on her) and she doesn't think Varvara will listen to her here and now. She'll have to beat some sense into her, won't she? Tabitha suddenly surges forward, a literal blur as she accelerates across the driveway; water sprays up behind her as she passes, driving a single fist into Varvara's stomach. "Come on! Show me if you're that determined!"
COMBATSYS: Tabitha successfully hits Varvara with Blue Streak.
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Varvara 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 Tabitha
She appears so determined to do this that she doesn't seem to put up any sort of meaningful defense when Tabitha comes in low to drive that gutbuster to bust her gut. There doesn't appear to be any sort of act of self-preservation aside from deciding, simply that offense is the best defense. Her arms are going open wide for what looks like probably some sort of nasty hug.
Even if she weren't drenched in rain, mud, and who knows whatever the hell else is floating around the rising waters that threaten to bury Metro City forevermore, it would be hard to see her as anyone someone would ever want to willingly be in the grasp of.
As she tumbles backwards, doubling over and not quite righting herself up before she falls onto her seat and into the mud, she seethes. A hand slams into the concrete - it seems to leave behind a crack, but it's hard to tell given the low visibility. What is highly visible is how much her arm shakes as it tries to support her weight.
"Varvara." That would probably be misinterpreted as just a nonsensical uttering and not come off as a highly belated answer to what her name is, given the poor timing of it all for her to even speak, as she falls to her other hand as well. This one goes into the mud, which is in itself not a place that encourages a stable place to plant one's hand. She seems to realize this as she lifts it out of the mud and slaps it onto the asphalt.
"Why do you... care," she mutters almost inaudibly as the less muddied hand clutches her forehead. She's dizzy, no doubt about it. Dizzy. Probably has a headache just from how hungry she has to be. The way her fingers tense as she clutches her head, one might think she's almost trying to crush her head.
Who knows.
She gets up to a kneel a moment later, breathing loudly as she struggles for breath. Is she having trouble standing up? Does she need a hand? She seems to vaguely look up towards Tabitha. Is she going to ask for--
No, she suddenly dives forward, barely going above the ground, arms outstretched as she looks like she wants to tackle Tabitha's shins, but she doesn't have so much velocity or any sort of favorable angle to work with. It can't really be treated as much more than yet another in a long line of almost-techniques ravaged by her physical weakness.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha instinctively dodges Varvara's Weakened Fleeing Musician.
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Varvara 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 Tabitha
"Tabitha," Tabitha says back. She figured out what Varvara means, at least a little bit. "...Hi."
Tabitha has fought grapplers before, but rarely ones with any real amount of skill. In some of the lesser tournaments, you see 'grapplers' who are big guys who have never really learned a style but know they can pick up pretty much anything and throw or squeeze it. Those are the sorts Tabitha has encountered and dealt with.
Even exhausted, Varvara shows more skill than they do. The tackle at her legs comes at her, and Tabitha leaps it; she simply (well, perhaps not simply) bounds over the other woman, landing behind her. She skids when she lands, windmilling one arm for a moment to keep her balance before spinning back to face Varvara.
"I care because I don't want anyone to suffer if they don't have to," Tabitha says, her face drawing toward seriousness. "The people here, me, you. I've seen enough, and it's hard enough to get by without thugs breaking in, without people stealing, without things being /worse/ than they could be. I've been hungry too. It sucks. It sucks /bad/. But everybody in Metro's suffering."
She pauses. "I never talk like this," Tabitha says, scowling. "I don't know /how/. But if you need a fight to convince you to stop looting, it's a fight you'll get!"
Tabitha surges forward. Unfortunately (for her) she doesn't really have any practice kicking, so the obvious approach is out. She goes to a crouch, hooking one fist around in a strange arcing punch while her other stays back, ready to defend. It's a boxing maneuver, certainly - she's used it before, if not so /low/.
COMBATSYS: Varvara endures Tabitha's Guard Knuckle.
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Varvara 0/-------/--=====|======-\-------\0 Tabitha
Exhausted. Starving. Probably dehydrated. That she's still swinging at all, or trying to, is a sure sign of some manner of strength. It seems all external, looking from the outside in. That this sort of strength is about all she's ever had, in her life, to pull herself as she seems to... from the looks of it. Not so much strength of mind, or strength of character, or strength of desirable appearance. What one sees is probably all there is to see.
Is someone like that really worth pulling out of the muck, or to be put down? That downward punch that comes shortly after she slides from the short-sighted spear tackle (it's a safe assumption that it might have been something like this, if it was) as she tries to push herself back up is landed without any sort of difficulty.
Fist strikes into hardened, tough flesh without much give. Varvara roars with what air her lungs have when it all rushes out of her lungs again. It gives the idea of some sort of second wind after having gone through so much, but no matter the front she puts up, it's obvious she's slowing down. What strength she might have demonstrated early on saps away slowly.
"What do I do instead?" She asks as she turns to face Tabitha, so quickly enough that the very fact she's hardly bowed by the punch might throw her planned defensive posture off guard, as Varvara lumbers into her with an outstretched left hand to try and shoot past the defensive arm towards her neck.
"I stop... then what? You feed me? Feel sorry for me? Then... then... then what's next? Next day? Day after? What do I do?" She asks, words more uneven and fragmented than the notation suggest, as she clenches her hand around... shoulder, neck, somewhere in between? She can give a hell of a nasty pinch, but it doesn't seem like she has it in her to maintain her grip for long if she is even allowed to maintain one.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha just-defends Varvara's Weakened Quick Throw!
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Varvara 0/-------/--=====|======-\-------\0 Tabitha
Tabitha wishes she had a better answer for Varvara. She doesn't. Tabitha can probably afford to help one more person, for the duration of this emergency, if it's not too much longer. She can't help every ruffian in Metro (and, honestly, probably wouldn't want all of them in her house at once anyway). She's pretty sure she can't fix everything.
"I don't know," Tabitha says, with more self-honesty than anything else. "Nobody knows. But I'll be damned if I sit here while everything goes wrong and I don't do anything about it! There's a lot of scared people in Metro City right now and I'm not going to let anyone make it worse while I'm still up and moving."
Varvara comes in at Tabitha. Normally, Tabitha does not like fighting good grapplers - she's never sure what to do about them - but today she has managed it. Varvara gets her hand around Tabitha's arm, but she does something with her body under the raincoat, and suddenly Varvara is grabbing nothing but sleeve; even if she squeezes, there's nothing there to break, nothing to twist. Tabitha manages to slip entirely out of the raincoat, leaving her in a T-shirt and short jeans, not quite shorts but not quite pants either - they look like an attempt to save something that ripped up near the bottom. She is already damp and almost immediately becomes drenched.
"Keep it," she says, sounding weary too. "I can't tell you what to do. I can only tell you what I'm doing, and if Metro City is going to Hell I'm going to try to stop it as long as I can. Maybe even the whole world at this rate." She knows of the natural disasters elsewhere, too.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha takes no action.
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Varvara 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\0 Tabitha
Is there an end in sight for the rainfall? It has done nothing but grow more and more violent as the time goes on, to levels that have forced the scientific community to come up with a new scale to better handle the extremes in wind speed, rainfall, and all other such factors. It would be an exciting time to be a meteorologist... far away from Metro City.
Tabitha's admission of not knowing is met with... well, Varvara's face hasn't really changed much in expression between 'clearly in haze of flight or fight response' to 'angry' en route to the attempt at taking her by her shoulder, neck, somewhere around there. The hand manages to clench for a moment, and only just, twitching slightly open and closed as there ends up far more space than her educated fingers expect. Confusion.
She's left with a raincoat dangling by the shoulder she has grabbed, gravity pulling it in such a way that it does not obscure her face from where Tabitha now stands. Her arm shakes in holding this rain-slick raincoat as it is. She seems to have just enough strength that friction not be able to fully dictate that it escape from her hand to collapse into the muddy yard of whoever lives - or lived - here.
Her expression blanks a touch, for some inability to relax. Standing tall as she is, she is basically dying of hunger. Her breathing remains a bit labored, as though she still hasn't fully gotten over the punch to her gut.
Compare to Tabitha, who stands tall and resolute as she now endures the elements sans proper raincoat, which is now in the hand of the somewhat older, slightly shorter, far bulkier woman before her.
"What... you just gonna... punch... everything in your way?" She finally thinks to speak, a ways after Tabitha vows to spread her grasp on a worldwide level. "That's... that's what I do... every day, 'cause I gotta eat...."
She seems to be eyeing the sleeve she's holding, as though she might in fact be considering attempting to eat the raincoat. She does appear to be willing to go to that length in an ill-advised attempt to stave off her death by starvation.
"And here I am! I got... nowhere left. Nothin' I can do! All I can do," she wordlessly finishes by just demonstrating via hurling the raincoat about by one arm. It comes perilously close to clipping Tabitha at least once in the display, but it is incapable of doing any real lasting harm even if a sleeve does slap against her. It is but a mere wet raincoat.
Varvara falls down to her rear end as she finishes twisting and whipping the thing around... and buries her face in it. "I'm nothin' else but a fighter! That's... that's all I got! I'm not some... some rich college kid!" She spits those words out with whatever venom is left to be bared in her metaphorical fangs, given how dry she seems to be running on her reserves. "Some lucky girl that gets married to some rich guy and runs off to live happily ever after! Some pretty bitches who don't got scars all over 'em... they got choices. What do I got?"
Is she sobbing? The rain makes it impossible to say one way or the other. "Can't... can't even keep up as hired muscle, these are all I have!" Frightening flashbacks of things that go above and beyond her comprehension still linger fresh in her mind, like that time she went to a warehouse and found... that big, disgusting, quivering, tentacled thing that ate so much of the hired goons that Duke had sent alongside herself.
"'n... I see so many dumb kids! They got everything! In a... a good school! And they... they wanna play on the streets, live like I do... watching some kid like her," who, "years ago, go... stupid girl, lost herself, and... and she wouldn't listen to me if I tried... why'd she throw that away to be something like me?!"
Something. Not someone.
"I'm dying... I'm dying... I can't do anything else... what else could I even do for a living? I'm nothing but... but... some ugly lady who don't give a shit, don't want to be lucky, don't want to be pitied, I just... I'm so... hungry..."
She goes quiet, her breathing a bit heavier as she gasps for air. Maybe she's burying her head so deep into that raincoat that she's threatening to accidentally smother herself.
COMBATSYS: Varvara takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Varvara 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\0 Tabitha
Tabitha doesn't think of it as spreading her grasp everywhere.
She thinks of it as the willingness to keep trying even when she's hurt or tired or worn out. Because even if winning is hard when you try, if you don't even try, it's impossible. Can't win if you don't play.
She thinks of it as not being able to run from her problems. It's more than Metro City that's got problems; it's the world. But she never gave up before and she's not going to start now, even if it's a little more than any woman can deal with herself.
Most of all, she thinks of it as not giving up, no matter what. Honestly, before Varvara spoke to her, Tabitha had never really put it into words before. It's always harder when you're trying to tell someone else - harder, but then easier, once you've come to a decision and found some of the words. You only need to do that once.
Tabitha doesn't quite stand as tall in the rain as she'd like. It's cold and her short pants are not /that/ warm; she does shiver. She crouches down, hunching slightly against the storm, not quite sheltering Varvara but definitely present nearby.
"Screw that," Tabitha says, dropping into the bad language she's been trying to use less over time. "I'm nothing but a fighter either. My cousin did boxing to try to feed our family, but I'm better than he was, so now it's me. We didn't have much growing up either. Still don't, honestly," she admits, though part of that is because Tabitha keeps giving away some of her winnings to people who have even less than she does. Maybe that makes her a sucker. "I never went to college, I barely finished high school, and I'm sure as hell not married to anyone with money!"
Tabitha winds up. She doesn't punch Varvara, though - she tries to slap her, to shock her out of whatever state she's in. "If you give up," she says, more sharply, "you lose! Don't let life beat you down like that - you're still alive, you're not dead yet, and don't let anyone tell you you are! That's not pity - that's truth! As long as you're alive, as long as you don't let anything beat you, you can keep trying. I don't care if you come with me or not, and I don't care if you hate me for making you keep trying, but I'm not going to let /you/ just cry 'til you've lost either if there's anything I can do about it!"
She straightens up at least part of the way. "So what'll it be? Are you going to stay here? Are we going to find something to eat together? Or what?" She's left herself kind of open after that slap, but she's not sure Varvara's going to follow up with it.
COMBATSYS: Varvara blocks Tabitha's Jab Punch.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Varvara 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\1 Tabitha
Is she listening? The way she hides her face in that raincoat might even be blocking her ears from whatever else. Mutual autobiographies are shared between one another, the only other audience being the rain that doesn't seem to want to drop what it's doing in favor of continuing to drop, and the wind channel surfs through the many images that Earth comprises of. Triumph, defeat. Happiness, despair. Controversy, celebration. Maybe the only two who really need to listen, are each other.
There doesn't seem to be much in the way of acknowledgement on the Greek-Cypirot wrestler's part as she still sits there, looking like a long-discarded crumpled wrapper that once must have housed a really disgusting piece of candy that no one finished, colored in streaks of brown, dark red, and whatever other hues might have accumulated from the sheer filth of the environment. It doesn't seem any effort to clean up such a thing would be worth it, as the wrapper's purpose has long since ended and no longer would have been useful for much else - to say nothing of the wasted candy.
Tabitha rears back a hand to slap her...
The raincoat is vaguely flung against the hand, off-handedly. An aggressive deflection, as if asking for her to shoo, go away, leave her alone to just crumple up and die... right?
"Shut up." She finally responds, trying to cut her off around the time she mentions finding something to eat together. Is that it?
She tosses the raincoat back at Tabitha proper. It might surprise her as it is poised to maybe smother itself all over her as it unfurls in the air, but it isn't a feint to some nasty sucker punch, or any such equivalent she might have in her arsenal.
"I'm starving," she asserts, voice trailing off on the starvation part as she works herself up. Her head remains bowed for the most part, aside from one of her hands resting against her forehead. She turns vaguely in her direction, if not all the way, posture largely hunched over.
"Shut up," she repeats in an almost monosyllabic fashion. Like a broken record. "Show me the food..."
...
...
...
...
"Please."
COMBATSYS: Varvara takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Varvara 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\1 Tabitha
Tabitha does not talk about her background much. Some of it, of course, is not hard to figure out. Other parts, the majority of the world simply doesn't care about. The last parts are simply not so public. She gets the feeling Varvara has much the same qualities to her background, even if the details vary.
Varvara blocks a slap with her coat. Tabitha doesn't try again; she got a result she was hoping for, as Varvara isn't just letting her hit her anymore. She expects to get punched in return, or thrown, or ... something.
Instead, she gets a request. With politeness. Grudging politeness, maybe, but it's there. Maybe she hasn't given up, Tabitha thinks. Maybe she's willing to keep trying. Or maybe she just sees Tabitha as an easy mark. It won't be the first time; Tabitha would rather keep her hope up for the future.
"Okay," she says, trying to figure out how she can make her budget stretch to include another wrestler for more than one meal. She'll... figure it out, somehow. But she's not going to let the Cypirot think of herself as nothing but trash if there's anything she can do to manage it. Maybe she can find a way for them to work together against the... everything.
COMBATSYS: Tabitha has left the fight here.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Varvara 0/-------/-======|
COMBATSYS: Varvara wanders on to find the next challenge.
Log created on 14:38:37 09/07/2014 by Varvara, and last modified on 22:20:41 09/07/2014.