Post by CVO on Sept 26, 2021 13:13:59 GMT -5
The tell tale sound of rubber soled sneakers squeaking against hard flooring resonated throughout the hallowed halls of that gym, a song that supported by the bassline of the vicious repetition of blunt force trauma perpetuated by body parts impacting the unyielding leather of a heavy bag. She’d been there earlier than most of the previous occupants, and now she’d been there since long after all of them had left. It was the nature of the self destructive beast, the need to be better, to do better, the refusal to quit that burned deep inside of her ribcage where no opponent had yet to reach.
After all, no one beat the shit out of Catherine van Owen quite like Catherine van Owen did.
Hand wraps were drawn taut, the fabric damp and sticky, completely saturated with her own sweat and blood. Aching muscles screamed for relief, screaming for her to stop as every fiber of her being warned her of what was going to come if she didn’t relent and succumb to the acidic wrath that was building up deep inside of them: stop, or we’ll fucking make you stop, and if we make you stop, you won’t start again until we tell you to. Her training regimen had gone past the point of making sense, past the point of where logic and reason dictated that she go. Though, maybe there was a pattern to her madness, in and of the fact that she’d trained properly and still lost; she’d done things the way that she was supposed to do them, and still wound up making out with the fucking canvas like it was a pay per view lover on an OnlyFans account: fuckin’ sloppy and uncut.
The recovery time for her ego had extended its welcome, her body would be fine.
It wouldn’t be fine, but she could power past a physical injury. Another loss? She didn’t know if she had that in her.
So, she powered through it. Bloody knuckle prints marked the leather of that old heavy bag that had to be held together by wrapping tape that was once white and now red, painted by the precious vitae that spackled over it like wet plaster applied through a filter of handwraps that were bound to lose their fucking integrity by the end of the week if not the end of the day. Her shins, her forearms, both were red and swollen, bound to turn purple and bruised. Elbows and knees weren’t just ashy, they were starting to crack on the skin from how calloused they were becoming from how she’d decided to train.
She was going to break before she bent and that was becoming evident.
Her voice was hoarse, shaky, each scream with each kata becoming less of a regimen and more of a feral fucking roar that was more suited towards the open maw of a wounded animal than an actual person, her eyes blood shot from only being closed when she sought sleep from a bed of exhaustion, microdosing on death rather than resting, just moments of intermittent darkness that came as a result of purging those nasty little brain chemicals that’d eventually wear down the walls keeping the madness back if she kept letting them eat at it all.
This was her church, these were her prayers, and her gods were the ones that lived in the steel of her weights, the leather of her equipment, the fibers of her gears, and the ones that dictated battle and war. Her sacrifice to them was her blood, sweat, and tears, the only thing she asked them for was the same thing that great Hector asked of Achilles before he marched out of the gates of Troy to face him down: don’t let me die a fucking coward. Unlike Hector though, she wouldn’t be chased seven times around the walls of her home, she’d either show Niamh and Josiah what the resolve of a warrior was when they were granted the gods given gift of no greater alternative, or she’d break herself against them just like the tide against the rocks.
For every word that remained unspoken, those eyes of her spewed out volumes of what was inside of her. The language of her body, the rhythm of her attack. Hands, and feet. Knees, and elbows. Forearms and shins. Every inch of her extremities were weapons. Each had been layered with bruises and calluses, calcified bumps layered bones where they’d been cracks, as steel sharpens steel, so had her opponents sharpened her. Action Wrestling had nothing so far but melt down the iron that she was and turn her to the true steel, the steel that reforged and tempered by each new fight, each new battle, each proverbial war that she plunged herself into time and time again as she fought legends, and champions, and..
“You’re still droppin’ your fuckin’ left, you bum.” Came the voice from her side that startled her from her reverie.
Stutter step, she nearly collided with the bag from her concentration being broken by the voice from the ether, practically waking her up from the trance. Startled, she looked over to the source of it. The man who trained her, the same man who’d recently trained her brother, the man who’d trained more than one champion: Connor MacNamara. Blue eyes and black hair, scars that littered his body. From the edge of those lethal knuckles, to the muscles that snaked up his arms and corded him from forearms to shoulders. Handsome, devilish, but that grin on his lips was anything but friendly as he started to cross his arms over the expanse of that solid granite chest.
“You go in against Niamh like that, she’s gonna fucking eat you alive.”
“Yeah, took me a while to figure that one out, considering they didn’t even get her name right.”
“Come again?”
“Yeah, they fucked up the spelling. It was N-i-a-m-h.”
“..No, that’s how you spell it.”
“Excuse me? Where in the happy go lucky fuck is the v? Where’s the e?”
“The Mh makes the v sound.”
“Fi-- No it fuckin’ doesn’t. Look, Coach. I’m not gonna de-”
“Aye, let’s not debate the hows and whys of my first fuckin’ language and lets get onto why the fuck you’re training without a spotter.”
An annoyed breath left the old wolf’s nose in a snort as air left him, moving forward to grab the heavy bag, to brace it against him, leaning on it as he watched his newest pupil, the sister of one of his best friends, messy haired and wild eyed, the absolute beast of a woman watching him cautiously, as if half expecting her new found mentor to smack the fuck out of her.
“I.. Everyone else left. I just needed to blow off steam.”
“By playin’ patty cake with a bag that doesn’t hit back?”
“It’s not like that, I--”
“Aye? It’s not? Well, what it’s like then, Girl?”
“I was ju--”
SMACK!
The hard impact of Connor’s hand being brought across CVO’s face had her entire head snapping to the side from the force of it, but the sting to her pride hurt worse than the reverberation through the now red flesh of her cheek and the rattling of her teeth, but the rage that came from the blow had her snapping back up instantly, a wild haymaker coming up all the way up from south of her waist as she launched herself at the wry irishman who just stepped to the side of her, catching both of her legs with just one of his own, sending her stumbling and crashing into the ground like a jello legged foal that just came from its mother.
“..You let an old cunt like me do that to you, what do you think the war machine that I fucking hand built is going to do to you when you step inside of her home? You think she’s going to be gentle? Stroke your hair and tell you how precious you are? You daft fucking bitch, she’s going to eat you alive and use those ribs that she pries out of you to pick her teeth with!” Snarling, much like the animal he so deeply identified with, Connor strolled passed her, stepping over her as he moved to sit down on a nearby weight bench, putting his ass to the leather an’ placing his elbows on his knees. “Niamh doesn’t feel sorry for herself, she doesn’t get so deep in her own head that she can’t climb out, and she doesn’t cry, bitch, piss, and moan with each loss. She learns, and then she kills what’s ever in her way because it’s what she fuckin’ does, you stupid girl. The training either breaks you, or it turns you into a monster, a predator. It’s only either get tougher from here, so if this is the extent of what you can rise to? You should stop, give up, and clear your belongings from my fucking home, because I won’t accept anything short of you meeting my standards.”
“I..”
“You-you-you. You fuckin’ what, Catherine? You gonna lay there and bleed with blood flowin’ from your little crooked nose, or are you gonna get up and put foot to her narrow, flat, arse and move up the food chain?”
“..I’m going to put foot to her ass.”
“And what about Josiah Howard? You gonna play second fiddle to THAT fuckin’ loser? You gonna listen to him talk about yer delicate little woman skin?” He asked, clicking his tongue after.
That.. She huffed. She huffed, and she slammed a fist into the hard floor before getting up to a kneel, and then a crouch, and then she stood up to her feet just in time to be hit in the face with a flying towel from her the man she was callin’ coach so she could wipe the fresh blood from her face, courtesy of the floor.
“I’m going to fucking murder him. I’m going to make him have a PTSD episode every time he opens his shitty, misogynistic mouth. I’m going to pound my name into his chromosomes until he’s wearing that shit like a tattoo into his goddamn DNA. He’s going to duck and run everytime he even thinks about talking to a woman, I’ll make him develop a fuckin’ stutter whenever he uses feminine pronouns because of the ass beating that comes associated with him. I’ll make that mother fucker learn the hard way that women are wrought from pain and suffering, that’s what I’m going to fucking do to him with this delicate woman skin.”
That, made Connor nearly howl with laughter, clapping his hands before rubbing them together.
“Aye? Thattagirl. Thatta fuckin’ girl, Cee-Vee.”
“As for Niamh? She’s like a sister to me. I love the girl. She’s tough as sixteen penny nails, but I’m a goddamn Sawzall with a carbide blade that doesn’t give a FUCK what she’s made out of. I don’t care who trained her, or where she trained. She knows everything I’m gonna do. I know she does. I know she’s expecting me to use what I’m gonna use, and you know what coach? She’s absolutely fuckin’ right, but it’s not gonna matter because I’m not the same chick she’s used to. I’m not that dumb bitch, I’m a new breed of dumb bitch, and I’m coming to that match hungry.”
Connor just nodded, unable to help his smirk.
“Good, then go wash the blood off and rest. Tomorrow, you fuckin’ eat until your stomach bursts. I’m not accepting anything less, anymore..”
Pause. Beat.
“Thanks, Coach.”
CVO turned on her heel, breathing out with a nasally wheeze, eyes closing for a moment only to open again, heading towards the back to prepare for what might be her last feast: Niamh, and Josiah Howard.
After all, no one beat the shit out of Catherine van Owen quite like Catherine van Owen did.
Hand wraps were drawn taut, the fabric damp and sticky, completely saturated with her own sweat and blood. Aching muscles screamed for relief, screaming for her to stop as every fiber of her being warned her of what was going to come if she didn’t relent and succumb to the acidic wrath that was building up deep inside of them: stop, or we’ll fucking make you stop, and if we make you stop, you won’t start again until we tell you to. Her training regimen had gone past the point of making sense, past the point of where logic and reason dictated that she go. Though, maybe there was a pattern to her madness, in and of the fact that she’d trained properly and still lost; she’d done things the way that she was supposed to do them, and still wound up making out with the fucking canvas like it was a pay per view lover on an OnlyFans account: fuckin’ sloppy and uncut.
The recovery time for her ego had extended its welcome, her body would be fine.
It wouldn’t be fine, but she could power past a physical injury. Another loss? She didn’t know if she had that in her.
So, she powered through it. Bloody knuckle prints marked the leather of that old heavy bag that had to be held together by wrapping tape that was once white and now red, painted by the precious vitae that spackled over it like wet plaster applied through a filter of handwraps that were bound to lose their fucking integrity by the end of the week if not the end of the day. Her shins, her forearms, both were red and swollen, bound to turn purple and bruised. Elbows and knees weren’t just ashy, they were starting to crack on the skin from how calloused they were becoming from how she’d decided to train.
She was going to break before she bent and that was becoming evident.
Her voice was hoarse, shaky, each scream with each kata becoming less of a regimen and more of a feral fucking roar that was more suited towards the open maw of a wounded animal than an actual person, her eyes blood shot from only being closed when she sought sleep from a bed of exhaustion, microdosing on death rather than resting, just moments of intermittent darkness that came as a result of purging those nasty little brain chemicals that’d eventually wear down the walls keeping the madness back if she kept letting them eat at it all.
This was her church, these were her prayers, and her gods were the ones that lived in the steel of her weights, the leather of her equipment, the fibers of her gears, and the ones that dictated battle and war. Her sacrifice to them was her blood, sweat, and tears, the only thing she asked them for was the same thing that great Hector asked of Achilles before he marched out of the gates of Troy to face him down: don’t let me die a fucking coward. Unlike Hector though, she wouldn’t be chased seven times around the walls of her home, she’d either show Niamh and Josiah what the resolve of a warrior was when they were granted the gods given gift of no greater alternative, or she’d break herself against them just like the tide against the rocks.
For every word that remained unspoken, those eyes of her spewed out volumes of what was inside of her. The language of her body, the rhythm of her attack. Hands, and feet. Knees, and elbows. Forearms and shins. Every inch of her extremities were weapons. Each had been layered with bruises and calluses, calcified bumps layered bones where they’d been cracks, as steel sharpens steel, so had her opponents sharpened her. Action Wrestling had nothing so far but melt down the iron that she was and turn her to the true steel, the steel that reforged and tempered by each new fight, each new battle, each proverbial war that she plunged herself into time and time again as she fought legends, and champions, and..
“You’re still droppin’ your fuckin’ left, you bum.” Came the voice from her side that startled her from her reverie.
Stutter step, she nearly collided with the bag from her concentration being broken by the voice from the ether, practically waking her up from the trance. Startled, she looked over to the source of it. The man who trained her, the same man who’d recently trained her brother, the man who’d trained more than one champion: Connor MacNamara. Blue eyes and black hair, scars that littered his body. From the edge of those lethal knuckles, to the muscles that snaked up his arms and corded him from forearms to shoulders. Handsome, devilish, but that grin on his lips was anything but friendly as he started to cross his arms over the expanse of that solid granite chest.
“You go in against Niamh like that, she’s gonna fucking eat you alive.”
“Yeah, took me a while to figure that one out, considering they didn’t even get her name right.”
“Come again?”
“Yeah, they fucked up the spelling. It was N-i-a-m-h.”
“..No, that’s how you spell it.”
“Excuse me? Where in the happy go lucky fuck is the v? Where’s the e?”
“The Mh makes the v sound.”
“Fi-- No it fuckin’ doesn’t. Look, Coach. I’m not gonna de-”
“Aye, let’s not debate the hows and whys of my first fuckin’ language and lets get onto why the fuck you’re training without a spotter.”
An annoyed breath left the old wolf’s nose in a snort as air left him, moving forward to grab the heavy bag, to brace it against him, leaning on it as he watched his newest pupil, the sister of one of his best friends, messy haired and wild eyed, the absolute beast of a woman watching him cautiously, as if half expecting her new found mentor to smack the fuck out of her.
“I.. Everyone else left. I just needed to blow off steam.”
“By playin’ patty cake with a bag that doesn’t hit back?”
“It’s not like that, I--”
“Aye? It’s not? Well, what it’s like then, Girl?”
“I was ju--”
SMACK!
The hard impact of Connor’s hand being brought across CVO’s face had her entire head snapping to the side from the force of it, but the sting to her pride hurt worse than the reverberation through the now red flesh of her cheek and the rattling of her teeth, but the rage that came from the blow had her snapping back up instantly, a wild haymaker coming up all the way up from south of her waist as she launched herself at the wry irishman who just stepped to the side of her, catching both of her legs with just one of his own, sending her stumbling and crashing into the ground like a jello legged foal that just came from its mother.
“..You let an old cunt like me do that to you, what do you think the war machine that I fucking hand built is going to do to you when you step inside of her home? You think she’s going to be gentle? Stroke your hair and tell you how precious you are? You daft fucking bitch, she’s going to eat you alive and use those ribs that she pries out of you to pick her teeth with!” Snarling, much like the animal he so deeply identified with, Connor strolled passed her, stepping over her as he moved to sit down on a nearby weight bench, putting his ass to the leather an’ placing his elbows on his knees. “Niamh doesn’t feel sorry for herself, she doesn’t get so deep in her own head that she can’t climb out, and she doesn’t cry, bitch, piss, and moan with each loss. She learns, and then she kills what’s ever in her way because it’s what she fuckin’ does, you stupid girl. The training either breaks you, or it turns you into a monster, a predator. It’s only either get tougher from here, so if this is the extent of what you can rise to? You should stop, give up, and clear your belongings from my fucking home, because I won’t accept anything short of you meeting my standards.”
“I..”
“You-you-you. You fuckin’ what, Catherine? You gonna lay there and bleed with blood flowin’ from your little crooked nose, or are you gonna get up and put foot to her narrow, flat, arse and move up the food chain?”
“..I’m going to put foot to her ass.”
“And what about Josiah Howard? You gonna play second fiddle to THAT fuckin’ loser? You gonna listen to him talk about yer delicate little woman skin?” He asked, clicking his tongue after.
That.. She huffed. She huffed, and she slammed a fist into the hard floor before getting up to a kneel, and then a crouch, and then she stood up to her feet just in time to be hit in the face with a flying towel from her the man she was callin’ coach so she could wipe the fresh blood from her face, courtesy of the floor.
“I’m going to fucking murder him. I’m going to make him have a PTSD episode every time he opens his shitty, misogynistic mouth. I’m going to pound my name into his chromosomes until he’s wearing that shit like a tattoo into his goddamn DNA. He’s going to duck and run everytime he even thinks about talking to a woman, I’ll make him develop a fuckin’ stutter whenever he uses feminine pronouns because of the ass beating that comes associated with him. I’ll make that mother fucker learn the hard way that women are wrought from pain and suffering, that’s what I’m going to fucking do to him with this delicate woman skin.”
That, made Connor nearly howl with laughter, clapping his hands before rubbing them together.
“Aye? Thattagirl. Thatta fuckin’ girl, Cee-Vee.”
“As for Niamh? She’s like a sister to me. I love the girl. She’s tough as sixteen penny nails, but I’m a goddamn Sawzall with a carbide blade that doesn’t give a FUCK what she’s made out of. I don’t care who trained her, or where she trained. She knows everything I’m gonna do. I know she does. I know she’s expecting me to use what I’m gonna use, and you know what coach? She’s absolutely fuckin’ right, but it’s not gonna matter because I’m not the same chick she’s used to. I’m not that dumb bitch, I’m a new breed of dumb bitch, and I’m coming to that match hungry.”
Connor just nodded, unable to help his smirk.
“Good, then go wash the blood off and rest. Tomorrow, you fuckin’ eat until your stomach bursts. I’m not accepting anything less, anymore..”
Pause. Beat.
“Thanks, Coach.”
CVO turned on her heel, breathing out with a nasally wheeze, eyes closing for a moment only to open again, heading towards the back to prepare for what might be her last feast: Niamh, and Josiah Howard.
