Baba Yaga (allsystemsgo) wrote in theinvincibles, @ 2015-08-22 19:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, cynthia caine, erin choi, patrick barton |
Who: Cynthia Caine [Alfa] and Erin Choi [Lima]. Featuring Patrick Barton [Foxtrot].
Where: The Ring [Sublevel 1]
When: Friday, August 21st. Late Afternoon / After Red Patrol
What: Grey and Blue teams share training on Fridays. Given Caine's and Choi's history and recent events, this is a very bad thing.
Warnings: Swearing and Violence
Status: Complete
Rage had a way of picking a target and unleashing hell upon it. Unfortunately and somehow blessedly, Erin’s ire already had a bullseye in Cynthia Caine. In the past, despite their many differences and several quarrels, she’d tried to remain at least outwardly civil to the woman she so deeply disdained, if only because Cynthia’s wife was too kind to deserve her teammate and her wife butting heads. But not even Olivia could stop this one, as in light of Erin’s brother’s disappearance, Alfa's badgering comments had gone too far. And Erin was not letting this one go. Not when everything that hurt and burned within her found a mark in the other agent, and the field team schedule left her with an opportunity to demonstrate just how angry she was. Despite her smaller, leaner stature, she was a force to be reckoned with, and her knuckles were stinging with the need to break bone. She approached Cynthia towards the tail-end of their training. “You. Me. The Ring. Let’s go.” Cynthia’s eyebrow quirked. A cold counterpoint to Erin’s fury, Agent Alfa was always collected. Her exterior never cracked, not even in the heat of battle or the stress of training. She could be callous and sarcastic, and usually was in fact, but she never lost her temper. Many people had many reasons for why this could’ve been, but the simple truth was that she did it on purpose to annoy people. There was nothing more annoying to an angry person than someone who was calm, and the Agents always tended to meet angry people in their line of work. Cynthia just...never turned it off. “Suits me,” she said simply, following along without further comment. No posturing: they were both too professional for that. It wasn’t until they were standing opposite one another that Cynthia spoke again. “What’s the point of this? I mean, I like to know why I’m kicking someone’s ass before I do it.” Considering it was all over the news that Tanner Choi was an escaped operative and that Erin herself was dogged by reporters on her way into training, she snorted. Cynthia knew damn well what the point of this was. “Then I don’t need to answer, because you won’t be kicking anyone’s ass.” She adopted a fighting stance, fists up, Erin was aware that in many respects she was the underdog. She hadn’t made any friends post-riot and her one ally was in Cait Delaney, who transferred out weeks ago. So simply wailing on Cynthia like a thug wasn’t going to earn her points. If they were going to fight, might as well make it part of training. And she took her first swing at Cynthia with that in mind. It was well-aimed, but experience and preparation allowed Cynthia to block it swiftly, knocking it aside in time to bring her knee up towards Erin’s side. Cynthia had been in the DMS for ten years, and devoted a majority of her time to the institution: though she was a sniper, she knew that snipers who couldn’t go toe-to-toe with someone ended up on memorial walls. She trained extensively, and often with her wife: Olivia was a melee-based agent, and it was only natural that the two career girls had shared plenty of tips with each other over the years. Still, despite all of that, Cynthia fought with a defensive edge: keeping her body tight and her movement small, she jabbed and parried more than actually reaching for an advantage. “You say that, but here we are,” Cynthia replied with a tight frown. “Not enough to just lay all the blame on our doorstep for those freaks and their arrogance, now you’ve got to actually fight us? I don’t know why we don’t just shove you in one of those cells with them.” Another swift jab from the left, aiming for Erin’s cheek this time. A punk move, designed to anger rather than actually hurt. Erin knew Cynthia was just warming up. After all, she had plenty of fuel for it. Not only did they have the post-riot argument when tensions were already high and personalities belligerent, but it was now absolutely no secret that Erin had some connection to the escaped alpha. And as much as that little, sensible voice in the back of her head told her not to fall for the goading, she still took the offensive and opened herself up for attacks. Cynthia landed a couple shots, but the dirty swing to her cheek granted Erin a moment to grab her arm, twist it, and knee her in the side. "Stop talking. If I wanted to hear you run your mouth, I wouldn't have brought you here." The redhead felt Erin’s knee connect and, though the initial pain of it stung she chose to collapse away from it, following its momentum and tucking into a roll. Cynthia straightened up again, her ribs protesting but otherwise fit, and moved swiftly into a few opportunistic punches. More often than not, Caine’s fighting style was designed to destabilise her opponent: whichever style her enemy favoured, Cynthia would try and do something to counter it. It was as much psychology as anything, and -as often as it worked- it also left her with more than a few bruises. “Sorry ‘bout it, Lucy Liu. You want me to go fetch the duelling swords?” Cynthia rolled her eyes, the banter all the more annoying because she knew, somewhere at the back of her mind, that if they weren’t so completely opposed to each other, she’d actually probably be enjoying it. As it stood, there was no square inch of Agent Lima that Cynthia didn’t want to punch into a bloodied pile. The sarcastic aside left Erin rolling her eyes, too, because it seemed Cynthia would try to make a cheap shot out of anything. "If that's your preference, Clytemnestra." Alfa scowled, aiming a few kicks low and ugly. “What I don’t get,” she said as though the thought had only just struck her, “is why you think you’re the only one who figures she has any first-hand experience with these people. Like you understand them, and I don’t. Like you think I’ve never met one that wasn’t trying to kill me. I mean, are you stupid or just arrogant?” Though Erin wasn't married to a melee fighter, she trained with Casey in wushu, so her attacks paced themselves until she very suddenly, viciously used speed to land several blows back. She could already feel some of the aches from where Cynthia landed hits, but thus far they were on even footing. Truthfully she felt something burning in her chest that was more credited to Cynthia's words than her strikes, and her punches and kicks became more aggressive. Alfa's words were hitting their mark, so her reaction was to make her attacks that much more punishing. "The reason you don't get it is because you never bothered to ask." She answered, tone flat, a low growl to it. "The reason you're not going to get an answer is because I don't feel like telling you. So shut. Up." Alfa nodded, content not to ask further questions. They traded blows back and forth, both evenly matched and more likely to end up wearing out the ring than doing any lasting damage to one another, but Cynthia was more than capable of waiting it out. She didn’t know why, though - and that was beginning to annoy her. Why should she wait? Lima had asked for the fight, after all. She’d thrown the first punch. She’d tried to make it look like it was just training, but they both knew it wasn’t and neither of them were good actors: they couldn’t have made this look like friendly sparring if there’d been money riding on it. She glanced around, taking advantage of a deflected punch to search for a weapon. They were in a training room, after all: there had to be something around that would teach Erin a lesson in looking before she leapt. She even hoped against hope that those duelling swords she mentioned earlier might have actually been laying around, but Cynthia’s luck wasn’t that good. “Whatever,” said the redhead, with a shrug. “I mean, not that you don’t bore me anyway, but this is even more tedious than usual. So maybe after I kick your ass right round this room, you leave me alone and start hunting down this traitor alpha that’s brought...what is it? Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow?” It was a cheap blow, and part of Alfa knew it. But her hands were clasped, hoping that Lima would rush straight into an angry attack, and leave her wide open to a crushing two-handed hammer blow. Already enraged, Lima's own patience wearing thin as the fight plateaued at little more than brutal strikes, she might not have been actively scouting for a weapon, but Alfa's words struck far deeper than any of her punches, tore into the gut of what upset her most, and a newer, darker fire was kindled inside of her chest. An enraged tear of a yell shook her throat and she rushed towards the redhaired woman, prepared to pummel her with a fury. “I mean I just--augh!” The sentence was cut off by a cry of surprise and pain, as Erin’s punch hit Alfa hard in the jaw. Her vision exploded, but the force of the hit gave Cynthia all the momentum she needed. She allowed the punch to spin her round, those clasped hands sailing down hard from above to deliver the knockout blow. The punch had hurt, though - and for once, Cynthia looked rattled. Her cheeks flushed, an atypical expression of outright anger on her face rather than the usual unflappable disdain. Her lip had split, and blood stained a few of her teeth as a thin trickle ran down her chin. “I will KILL you, bitch!” No mockery or sarcasm in Alfa’s voice, just boiling venom. There was a moment of sheer, unapologetic pleasure Erin took in landing that punch and in the woman's unbridled fury, the color of blood nearly matching Alfa's hair. But it was brief — too brief — of a moment of accomplishment as fiery-eyed Cynthia delivered a blow that was so powerful in itself without a declaration of murder that Erin staggered, brought to her knees. Intense pain shot through her and she was dazed, bleary eyes witnessing Cynthia about to bear down on her with one final assault. No, her mind rallied, and she pivoted her body, striking out a leg to kick Alfa square in the knee. When the woman went down, Lima crawled over her and landed punch after punch, adrenaline pounding through her veins until all she could see and conceive of was Cynthia's bloody face. Her throat was raw. She didn't know it, but she was screaming. By the time Patrick arrived, he wasn’t sure how long Lima had been on top of the other agent. There was just a momentary pause as he stepped out onto the training level, saw what was happening, and it seemed to slowly process in his mind. “Hey! HEY!” He shouted, before sprinting to the ring and jumping in. He had the advantage of size and strength over the other sniper, and used both to their fullest as he grabbed her, wrenched her off her opponent and pushed her aside. “That’s enough, Choi!” He shouted, before turning his attention to the agent still on the ground. Alfa was bleeding, but the distilled murder in her eyes burnt through all of that. With Foxtrot now present she didn't throw herself back at Erin, but instead propped herself up on her elbows. Her arms ached, and there was skin and blood under her fingernails, but she was clearly worse off than Lima. "Seems like the whole family's got a talent for going off the reservation," she said coolly, wiping her bloodied mouth with the back of one hand. "What else can you expect, Barton? She's unstable, that entire family tree's all twisted up in knots. I've got half a mind to clue the director on this assault." Cynthia had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but it didn't hurt to twist the knife. "You were in the ring; it's not assault," Patrick said flatly, before he turned back toward Lima. "But it was too far. You're damned lucky this didn't go further." He sighed. It didn't take a genius to know what had happened. Lima's personal troubles had been all but written in the sky, and Alfa was never one known for her sensitivity. "Go cool off," he said, softer, calmer. "Caine, I'll help you up to medical." After being forcibly removed from Alfa, Erin remained in a low crouch, dead silent and motionless, save for rapid breathing and a swallow of pain as her head caught up with her throat. Whatever rage or humiliation or even gratitude she felt (and she felt all of them, the first two at a level she hadn't experienced in years) were quashed behind a wall of absolute, ice-cold vacancy in her expression. Erin would've quit the ring to go offer herself up to Kellogg, but Barton was right. Bloody, split fists lifted herself off the mat. She climbed the ropes and exited in the direction of the shooting range. |