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Catspaw

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Offline Dradis

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Catspaw
« on: July 08, 2022, 06:12:26 PM »
The morning after a fight had never felt so bad.

Erica Ellis was certainly no stranger to adversity.  On more than one occasion, she'd had to dig deep to find what she needed in order to overcome a stiff challenge.  Time and again, she'd been dealt her fair share of hard licks, but time and again she'd proven that she could take them all and dish them back in full.  She'd even suffered the bitter taste of defeat once previously, and yet she'd still managed to build herself back up even better than she'd been before.

This time, though?  The beautiful blonde felt utterly lost and adrift as she struggled to come to terms with what had transpired the night before.

The first glimmers of the dawn's light were starting to peek through the window of her residence.  Erica had lost track of time as she sat curled up on the sofa - she hadn't gotten an ounce of sleep, and every minute and hour that passed felt like its own little eternity that had piled up one after another on top of each other.  At no point during this tortuous lapse of time had she been able to stop herself from dwelling over the blow by blow of the previous night's match, running its events through her head on a perpetual repeat in search of any point where a different course of action might have led to a less deplorable outcome.  But this was bound to be a futile exercise, no matter how badly she wished for it to be otherwise - much to her regret, it seemed like the only way out would have been to have never taken the fight to begin with.

And the most terrible part of all this heartache was the single person at its crux, the last one in the entire world that she would ever have expected to come to blows with: her best friend, Whitney Morgan.

* * * *

From the very beginning, the mood in the air had felt distinctly off.  Erica recalled having more trouble than usual when it came to putting herself in the right state of mind for this boxing match; she'd dismissed it as mere prefight jitters while she was backstage, but that nagging feeling followed her out from the dressing room and had continued to linger subconsciously as she made her ring entrance.

Erica was a born natural when it came to eliciting a favorable reaction from a crowd, and she typically could make a strong impression just by her physique and her bearing alone.  But upon climbing through the ropes and having her robe removed as she started to show herself off, it was apparent right away that the audience had already been swayed to the side of the girl waiting for her in the opposing corner.  The 21 year-old Whitney had never been lacking when it came to her looks, standing at 5'4, weighing 110 lbs, along with sporting shoulder-length black hair and a 34C bust.  Wearing her preferred fight attire, an orange string bikini that tied the top in between the cups, and complemented with a white set of gloves, the brunette's appearance was truly resplendent.  Even though Erica had seen this presentation from Whitney more than once, she suddenly was taking notice of just how well her friend had made the look work for her.

The two girls were the exact same height, and they were the exact same weight; Whitney was a year older, while Erica was slightly more well-endowed with her 36D bosom.  The visual contrast of their appearances was always what got noticed - that point had seemed to be emphasized all the more by the blonde wearing her now-trademark metallic blue string bikini and a black pair of gloves.  But perhaps for the very first time ever in Erica's mind, she began to appreciate the closeness with which she and the brunette matched up against each other.  Whitney seemed uncharacteristically assertive and flaunting in the way she bore herself; for sure, she hadn't backed down in the battle for mind space that played out both between the two of them and in the eyes of the audience.

Whitney had boldly stepped in close to stare her down as the two met in the center of the ring for their final face-off.  The other girl had a smile on her face, a bratty little grin that bespoke both of her eagerness to fight and her self-assuredness that she had it in her to pull off an upset over the blonde.  Erica's expression was much more aloof, but the steely quality of her reciprocated gaze communicated her intentions more than adequately.  When Whitney had originally pitched the match to her, she'd laid out a vision of it being a friendly little contest between the two of them.  With the benefit of hindsight though, it was clear that a competitive impulse had seeped in and shifted the tenor into something much less cordial.  Their mutual trainer had at first tried to persuade them into calling it off, but when it was clear that their minds were already made up, she ultimately elected to work the less experienced brunette's corner.  By the time the moment came when the two firmly and forcefully touched gloves, each had become fully resolved to give it their all in this fight.

To the chagrin of them both, nothing would be held back.


* * * *

It had taken a significant amount of coaxing, but Elliot Carter had finally managed to convince Erica into letting him come inside.

This was the first time he'd been over to her place, and his eyes had quietly taken stock of his surroundings as he entered.  Her condo was fairly spartan - the furniture was a basic, no-frills sort of fare, while the minimal amount of décor that filled the space had very little ostentation to it.  The neatness of how things were arranged and the tidiness of how they appeared seemed to suggest a space that didn't get lived in all that much, almost to the point of resembling a model unit.  The sole blemish of disorder to this otherwise pristine presentation was the blonde's street clothes, which had been dumped in an unceremonious pile in the middle of the living room.

Erica herself seemed to be quite listless, almost as though she were functioning on autopilot as she crossed the room and returned straight back to the spot on the sofa she appeared to have been in before he arrived.  Little trace could be found of the confident and formidable young woman that Elliot was accustomed to; he knew that her state of mind wasn't in the best place in the wake of the fight, but seeing it up close and personal was still jarring nonetheless.  Elliot felt uncertain of how best to approach it, but he was resolved to do what he could - letting things lie as they were was surely not going to be doing anyone any favors.

* * * *

Round 1 had started slowly as both fighters took their time feeling each other out.  In these early moments of the match, Whitney had been the lighter of the two on her feet as she glided smoothly in a clockwise rotation, while Erica seemed to plod in comparison as she shuffled forward in pursuit.  Both girls fought to set the range with their jab - Erica moved in behind hers as she sought to close the distance and cut off the ring, whereas Whitney had employed hers to try and keep things at arm's length.  This back-and-forth probing duel was the prevailing dynamic through much of the round, interspersed with brief exchanges of more eye-catching punches whenever one or the other found the right angle from which to plant her feet and trade.

It had appeared that Whitney was committed to trying to outbox the blonde.  The choice was a daring one to be sure, but putting it into action was no small feat.  Erica knew that the skills were there when it came to moving and punching, but throughout the opening stanza her friend had fallen short on translating those into a meaningful advantage.  Erica's jabs were finding the mark with greater regularity and landing with more oomph behind them compared to those of the brunette.  She'd also managed to score more often with her hooks that she swiped at the other girl's midsection with, while also mostly managing to nullify the majority of the right crosses that Whitney had tried to load up on.  Bit by bit, the weight of her shots and her patient pressuring had gained her ground as the brunette repeatedly had to back up to stay on the outside.

Late in the round, the other girl had been able to break up Erica's rhythm with a quick spate of jabs.  Whitney was timing her with these measured punches, setting her up before turning on the hips and launching into a booming right cross.  Reacting with only milliseconds to spare, Erica ducked and leaned into a right cross of her own, just barely avoiding her opponent's punch and landing a shot squarely on the mouth with the same fluid movement.  Whitney's legs were instantly unhinged and she'd stumbled backwards a few steps before they gave way, dropping to a seat on the canvas.

Erica couldn't help but savor the sight of her friend getting dumped on her ass in the middle of the ring.  The flash knockdown wasn't especially devastating on the other girl, but it had made for a strong statement nonetheless.  She felt powerful in that moment, and it was a sentiment that was loudly reflected in her expression.  It took Whitney only about a second or two to regain her bearings, and as she looked up to see the blonde looking back down on her, a particular feeling had started to coalesce within her as well.  Resentment?  Scorn?  Erica had paid little heed in that moment as she simply smiled back and made for the neutral corner.  Whitney was going to beat the count easily, and she was going to continue imposing herself on the brunette as the fight carried on.

Neither of them knew it, but the spark that had just been lit would grow into a raging cataclysm that would consume them both by the time it was all said and done.


* * * *

Elliot had cobbled together some breakfast from what Erica had available.  There wasn't a whole lot to work with, so it wasn't particularly fancy - just fried eggs and buttered toast - but that would be serviceable enough for the circumstances.  She didn't have a dining table either, so he set the plate in front of her on the coffee table as he took a seat in the armchair next to her sofa.

"C'mon," he urged gently, "You should eat something."

The blonde at last spoke up.  "What are you doing here."

"I needed to see how you were after last night."

"I would've thought you'd be with Whitney right now."

"Aimee's over there at the moment.  I'm going to be stopping by later on."

"She's really into you, you know.  It'd probably kill her if she learned that you chose to come here instead of seeing her first."

A pregnant pause broke off the conversation for a spell as each person took in what had been said.  But as the weight of the moment steadily built up until it finally breached a critical mass, the words began to flow with such an impulsion that they would no longer be contained.

"I'm sure she was just trying to impress you," Erica continued, "She just wanted to show you that she could hang tough and hold her own in a fight.

"How could you do it?  Do you have any idea what you've done?"

* * * *

Erica continued to make inroads as she took the fight to Whitney in Round 2.  As the stanza played out, it had felt like she was increasingly exerting her will on the other girl.

The brunette seemed to be having more trouble handling Erica's punches.  Each jab that landed carried with it a good amount of zip that appeared to bother Whitney each time her head got kicked back or her midsection got tagged.  That was to say nothing of the heavier shots that she was being threatened with - even if they hadn't managed to find their way through, many were still battering against the brunette's guard as she resorted to covering up more often than trying to slip or otherwise avoid the harm Erica had sent her way.  All told, it had made the blonde's task of cutting off the ring easier than in the previous round, and it was at this point that Whitney issued the first of what would be several clinches to try and break the momentum.

Her friend was not the only one looking to turn a clinch to their advantage, however.  Erica repeatedly moved in and tied up with Whitney, wrestling with her arms and pushing with her body weight as she tried to force the other girl backwards.  Whitney had been much less successful at keeping Erica at bay in these close quarters actions, and her efforts to push back or disrupt the blonde with short punches were subpar at best.  As it played out repeatedly, Erica's footwork and her heavy stick had quashed the brunette's ability to maneuver, followed by a crowd-in to make her cede canvas.  By the start of the round's final minute, she had been able to trap Whitney against the ropes where she started to let her hands go in earnest.

Whitney had tried to fight her way out from that unfavorable spot.  She'd initially shown good form as she looked to pick her moments and time the blonde for counterpunches.  But for all of the answers that she'd managed to pull out of her hat, none of them were good enough to get her all of the way to where she'd needed to be.  There was little hesitation from Erica as both of her hands flew freely, firing off hooks and uppercuts at a workmanlike rate; whenever the brunette would try to come forward, she would lean in with her upper chest or tie up and push to keep the other girl pinned where she was.  Though Whitney largely managed to avoid getting caught by anything serious, her output had increasingly been stifled by Erica's ceaseless pace and smothering body-to-body contacts.  By the end of it, the brunette had almost completely fallen back behind her defenses as all of the fire went in one way only.

At the bell, Erica had moved to finish the round with one last statement.  She stepped forward and pressed herself up close with Whitney, while her gaze bored in and aggressively sought to force the other girl into making eye contact.  Erica wasn't sure exactly what had motivated her to take that course of action - perhaps, in the heat of the moment, she'd felt encouraged enough to flaunt her success a bit, or she'd done it to repay the brunette for her pre-fight sass.  Either way, Whitney was not the least bit pleased to have the blonde chesting up on her, and Erica had watched as her friend's facial expression twisted into a pugnacious scowl.  There had been a smoldering rage in the other girl's eyes as she glared back, but Erica merely answered it with a conceited look before turning away to return to her corner - she hadn't grasped the true depths of the enmity that she had just stirred up with her actions.


* * * *

"She and I were closer than anyone.  We've always been there for each other.  Not anymore though.  After the way things went down, we're never speaking to each other ever again."

There wasn't any immediate response from Elliot.  Whether because he didn't have anything to say, or if he didn't feel it apropos to interject, it was hard for Erica to really tell.  But she wasn't particularly in the mood to care - the swirl of tormented feelings that had gripped her was burgeoning over all at once as they honed in on a singular outlet.

"Tell me why.  Tell me why you worked so hard to get her to fight me."

Looking him straight in the eye, Erica had Elliot's expression grow more and more tense as she lashed out at him with each accusatory barb.  The words seemed to be striking a nerve, wounding him in a way that he was trying not to let on.  And finally, as the emotion in the room crested to its peak, the break finally came.

"Wait... I... did what?"

* * * *

Round 3 was where everything came together.  From bell to bell, Erica executed her fight perfectly to a tee.

The blonde had come out quickly from her corner and was already past midring when she made contact with the brunette.  Just as before, she advanced behind her jab - but instead of probing tentatively, it had pistoned out ruthlessly to force compliance.  Whitney had been leggy as she tried to circle and make it out to ring center, but she was not as elusive a target as compared to earlier - she seemed uncomfortable handling the stick each time she got tagged by it, and before long it had put her into a steady retreat.

Once again, Erica had managed to drive her adversary to the ropes.  Whitney very much needed to find an avenue of escape, but she kept the brunette pinned down with her punches and by crowding and wrestling at the other girl's arms.  All of that infighting was difficult for Whitney to keep up with, and Erica had regularly been able to pick open holes in the brunette's guard and get in with her shots before those gaps could be closed.  The work had taken a particularly exacting toll downstairs as her fists snatched at the other girl's flanks and beltline - the sound of Whitney's petulant gasps and whines as her lithe chassis absorbed those blows was music to Erica's ears.

Whitney had started seeking out clinches of her own.  However, these tie-ups weren't being leveraged to the same ends - while Erica had used hers to proactively assert control and force the fight on the terms that she desired, Whitney was merely trying to hold out and withstand the blonde onslaught that was crashing into her.  Even so, the brunette was never able to stay off of the ropes for very long - after each break by the referee, Erica promptly forced the other girl right back into them again.  Erica had shown little respect for the few punches Whitney did manage to get off, which were a tepid don't-hurt-me sort of fare, whereas her own shots that landed were regularly catching the brunette cleanly.  Time and again, her crisp hooks snapped at cheeks and jawline, while her tidy uppercuts rocked the head backwards - her adversary was getting spanked and had steadily unraveled in the face of it all.  The payoff punch had been a potent left hook that she'd crammed into the other girl's midriff - Whitney had blurted out loudly as she succumbed to the gutwrenching blow and sank to her hands and knees.

Erica was in high spirits as she briskly headed to the neutral corner, but the fight was not yet over.  Despite being wracked with pain as the effects of the blonde's punch continued to be felt, Whitney drew upon every reservoir of grit and determination she had within her to bravely rise to her feet by the count of 8.  With about a minute remaining on the clock, Erica had advanced out to press the attack, wading in fearlessly as the other girl shied away and retreated backwards towards the ropes.  All of the action had flowed in a single direction as she let loose with everything she'd had in her bid to put the brunette away, while Whitney had leaned back into the strands and covered up face-in-gloves to try and ride it out.  Whitney's distress had never been more palpable as each punch Erica had thrown threatened to send her down for good, but a watertight guard combined with some highly motivated upper body movement had been just enough to carry her all of the way to the bell.

Erica had given her adversary a stern look-over as they separated.  Whitney's shopworn face had been made to serve as a vivid testament of how the two had measured up against one another up to that point, while the other girl's haggard demeanor bespoke of the fate that lay in store for her.

But even with a degree of confidence that high, the margin through which things could still go horribly awry was greater than the blonde could ever have imagined.


* * * *

"She said," Erica insisted firmly and forcefully, "She said that you'd been texting her on end.  Telling her how hot you thought it'd be to see her in a fight."

The sense of unease that had been building in Elliot as he bore the girl's ire suddenly felt all the more gutwrenching with this latest revelation.  Tacitly, there was a recognition that matters were about to get a whole lot worse before they could have any chance of becoming better.

"It couldn't just be anyone though," the blonde continued, "It had to be me.  You spent so much time and energy convincing her.  Getting her to want it just as much as you did."

"Erica," Elliot said, "The first time I heard about any of this was when you came to me to have the match set up."

* * * *

Whitney and her corner seemed cognizant that their game plan wasn't working as desired.  Thus at the outset of Round 4, the brunette stepped out to meet the blonde with a much different approach in mind.  No longer was she aiming to match Erica in boxing skill or looking to out-finesse her; instead, she took a bold gambit as she came forward with her heart set on duking it out freely.  Erica was initially taken aback by Whitney's more aggressive posture, but she quickly made her own adjustments as she shifted from pressuring stalker to cagey boxer.

Even with the roles reversed, the disparity between the two fighters remained quite evident.  Whitney's footwork was a bit too linear as she shuffled in with an almost guileless movement; similarly, she frequently ended up a step behind or out of position from where she needed to be when she tried to initiate exchanges.  By contrast, Erica glided smoothly across the ring as she steered her foe like a matadora, while the toll exacted on the brunette's condition made it easy to pick apart her guard.  Approaching the one minute mark of the round, the blonde remained firmly in control as she scuffed up the other girl's face with stiff jabs and bunched her up with strapping hooks and straights to the body, all while effortlessly evading the receipt.

Perhaps Erica was getting a bit overconfident.  Maybe she was becoming a little too careless.  Either way, she took her eye off of the ball for a single crucial second.  She never spotted Whitney's Hail Mary right cross until it was too late, the moment just before it smashed into her chin.

The next recollection was of the bright overhead lights as she stared straight up at them.  Though her head was in a fog, she quickly realized as she started to rouse that she'd been dropped by Whitney's blow.  Finding herself lying on her back with both arms stretched out above her head filled her with a dreadful sense of urgency and spurred her into action - rolling over and pushing herself up from the canvas, she just barely managed to rise and beat the count.  But even having made it to her feet, the knockdown had left Erica badly shaken - as the action resumed, she was a sitting duck as Whitney came lunging in at her.

Another right cross to the jaw had rocked her head back and sent her reeling backwards with the other girl in hot pursuit.  Erica couldn't find her footing as she stumbled away on shaky legs, and her efforts to rebuild her guard in the face of a hail of punches were repeatedly disrupted as one or more of her foe's shots would invariably find their way through.  The fight had spiraled out to the perimeter until the brunette managed to corral the blonde into a corner.  Erica covered up earmuff as her defenses were being whaled upon by the other girl's fists, but an uppercut at last parted her gloves and viciously snapped her head upwards.  Staggering forward in a daze, she'd desperately tried to tie up for a clinch, but instead had been pushed back and stacked up against the turnbuckle.

The final stretch of the round would rank as one of the worst single minutes that Erica had ever endured in her entire career.  Whitney's output had fallen off as she showed signs of tiring, but the calculus that informed her punches sharpened considerably as she dialed in on the blonde's rack.  Over and over again, Erica's tits were pounded by a mixture of ham-handed straights that smashed them against her chest, lusty hooks that swept into them from the side, and ripping uppercuts that buffeted them from underneath.  There was nothing she could do but soak it all up as she remained propped up with her hands in her lap - all that she could recall of the onslaught was the sound of her own agonized howls and the blinding pain that mounted further with each blow that landed to her jugs.  By the time it was over, Erica was out on her feet with her head lolling and both breasts knocked out of her bikini top as she slumped into the corner, but somehow she'd managed to remain standing through the bell that ended the round.

There was one thing about the episode that truly troubled Erica, and it was the same conclusion that she kept coming to as she replayed the events in her mind over and over and over again through the wee hours of the morning.  Whitney could very easily have finished her right then and there if she'd wanted to; instead, she'd made the decision to go after Erica's rack with that heartless show of spitefulness.  It was a telling sign of how badly things had spun out of control, and it hurt more than any single punch ever could.


* * * *

The briefest of pauses was followed from Erica by a terse single-word retort: "No."

"I thought the two of you had everything worked out together," Elliot protested, "That it would just be a nice, friendly little match.  I didn't imagine there was anything else going on behind it.  Nothing like that."

"She wouldn't lie.  She wouldn't make something like that up."

"I know how it looks.  And I know that you'd take Whitney's word first a thousand times before you'd take mine over hers.  But I never spoke with her like how you described.  I swear that's the truth."

"So what then.  How else would you explain where we ended up.  Should I be led to believe that someone tricked her?  That somebody out there pulled our strings until we wound up being at each other's throats?"

* * * *

Whitney had poured everything she'd had into the previous round's effort; at the start of Round 5, she was visibly out of gas.  Erica had struggled during the break to try and pull herself together, but it appeared that she had largely managed to recover by the time those 60 seconds were up.  As both now-topless fighters rose from their stools at the sound of the bell, there was no mistaking which one of them was the fresher beauty.

Coaxing her weary legs into action, Erica had marched across to the other side of the ring to meet her rival, whereas the other girl had barely gotten a few steps out of her corner as they came together.  Erica's jab immediately set the tone as its ramrod presence had put the other girl on her heels; Whitney fell back to the ropes and pulled her arms in tight to block as she braced herself for what was to follow.  Slowly, methodically, and ruthlessly, Erica laid into the brunette and punched as if she were hitting a heavy bag with nothing coming back in return.  Many of her initial straight punches were blunted or absorbed by the brunette's guard, but she'd been able to find more success with her wider shots lower down.  Each one that made it through and landed to the flanks yielded a satisfying gasp or whine of pain and served to break Whitney down that much further.

Whitney tried her best to cover up face-in-gloves and roll with the punches, but there was only so much that she could withstand while still immobile and trapped on the ropes.  Erica had kept applying her pressure patiently and persistently, showing no signs that she was at risk of punching herself out.  A breakthrough finally came via a swift left hook that found its way past and crammed itself into Whitney's midriff - never before had a blurt of pain sounded nearly as satisfying as the one that followed that punch's wake.  As her rival started to slump forward, Erica opened up with a series of sweeping hooks that aimed higher for the other girl's head.  Whitney tottered as the blows buffeted at her defenses, but through sheer perseverance she'd managed to keep her feet.

Payback to jug - there had been more than enough of that to go around.  Erica had bodied Whitney back into the strands and started firing off with a spate of crisscrossed lefts and rights to the chest.  These punches swept in an arc as they first brushed aside the brunette's guard and then plowed past in between the parted arms to get at the bosom that they'd laid open.  Whitney's breasts largely hadn't drawn much fire up until that point, but there as they finally earned Erica's full attention, the drubbing they received had been truly hellacious.  Shot after shot poured in and landed to the defenseless orbs, jostling the violently and smashing them forcefully into the chest wall.  Whitney's anguished wails that accompanied each robust impact and the tortured expression that grew increasingly plaintive on her face was the kind of fare that typically tugged greatly at the heartstrings, but Erica had not been moved to compassion by any of it.  Quite the contrary.

With the other girl beginning to wilt under the sustained assault, Erica had changed up and started throwing more broadly from the outside.  She quickly found her rhythm as she cycled between a left hook, a right hook, and another left hook in sequence.  Jug-jug-chin.  Jug-jug-chin.  All of the sharp punches found their mark and overloaded the other girl's senses.  As Whitney again had started to tilt forward, Erica took a step back and fired off a final left-right pair of hooks, landing them to the top of the head just before the brunette caved in and fell face-first to the canvas.

Standing over her fallen rival and staring down at her, Erica had ignored the referee's admonitions to go to the neutral corner.

"Stay down!" she'd screeched as she was being pushed back, "Stay down!  Stay down!"

Had those words been an imperious taunt roused by her dominance, or had they been a desperate please born out of her concern?  Even with the benefit of hindsight, Erica still didn't know the answer to that question.


* * * *

The uncomfortable silence once again filled the room.  It smothered out the air like a dreadful pall as the gravity of what had been insinuated started to sink in.

Erica was the first to speak.  It was a forlorn, single-word retort: "No."

Elliot did not respond straight away.  But even if he did not give voice to his thoughts quite as quickly, that did not suggest that he was in any way unmoved by the implications of the conclusion they'd arrived at.

"Why would anyone do that?" Erica exclaimed as both disbelief and despair threatened to swell up and consume her whole, "How would anyone even be able to do that?"

"I don't know."

* * * *

Whitney didn't stay down.  She didn't quit when the going had gotten to be its toughest.  Even as certain and imminent destruction stared her squarely in the face, she hadn't been willing to go out without putting up a fight.  She'd had no intention of doing what was good for her.

And Erica had never resented anyone more for what had to come next.

Her demeanor was hard-eyed and pitiless at the start of Round 6 as she fixed her sights on the brunette across the ring.  The other girl was in shambles as she'd creakily risen off of her stool, still mouthbreathing as she wearily assumed her stance.  It was doubtful that any amount of attention from her corner during the break would have been enough to revive her back to a condition where she'd be plausibly competitive.  What Erica had known for certain though was that the chances of her enemy being talked out of continuing the fight were absolute nil.

At the sound of the bell, the other girl had plodded out in a straight line to meet her at midring.  Whitney's movements were sluggish and she no longer bore the slick and crafty form that she'd shown in earlier rounds; her upper body was stiff and stationary as though she were a tree waiting to get chopped down.  Even so, it had been the brunette who'd gotten off the opening shots as she refused to give up on trying to make something happen.  A spate of tired jabs prodded out as they looked to take the blonde's tits - Erica had read them well and even accepted the last one striking her bosom.  As her foe's arm extended out with the last punch, she'd turned on her hips and answered with a lead right over the top of it that caught the brunette cleanly on the jaw.

The blow wobbled Whitney and sent her reeling away a few steps, but she'd found her footing and soon came back in for more.  Throwing caution to the wind, Whitney let loose a wild right hook to the body, but Erica rolled with it and countered with her own right that smote the other girl squarely in the face.  The brunette stumbled sideways on her heels and had tried to regroup, but she didn't get the chance - Erica stalked her and measured her perfectly as she'd gone in for the kill.  A savage right uppercut to the chin snapped Whitney's head back and put her out on her feet; a heartless left hook drilled her in the same spot just a split second later and sent her crashing to the canvas.  Erica had finished her motions with a spiteful last insurance right hook to the brunette's tits, but this was wholly unnecessary as the latter fell back and sprawled out at the blonde's feet.

Erica had gazed down to take stock of what she'd done.  Her fists had left Whitney lying spread-eagle and thoroughly knocked out; the other girl's damp and disheveled black hair partially obscured her battered face, while her body was motionless save for the rise and fall of her chest with each breath that she took mouth agape.  Erica's eyes did not linger on the sight for very long though as she turned away and headed to the neutral corner without taking another look back.  She showed no emotion as she'd made her way over, not paying any heed of the referee's count as it rose incrementally, and instead merely reached out to grasp the top ropes with her hands on either side of the turnbuckle as she stared out into the venue.

There had been no need for Erica to look back, because the tableau of Whitney's vanquished repose had been seared permanently into her consciousness.  And as the count inevitably reached ten, accompanied by the deafening sound of the bell and the dreadful eruption of the audience into wild applause, it finally hit home that she had just destroyed her former friend there in the ring.


* * * *

At last, Erica appeared visibly to be defeated.  She seemed to have no more fight left in her as the weight of all that had transpired finally hit home.  Elliot stood up and moved over to take a seat next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder as he tried his best to offer some sense of consolation.

"Listen.  One way or another, we'll work all of this through.  You and Whitney - the two of you love each other.  I have to believe that's still true, even after everything that's happened.  It'll take time, but you and her are going to set things right.  I know you will."

Erica didn't have anything to say to this, at least not right then and there.  That was fine though - much like Elliot said, the issue was not going to solve itself overnight.  But the hope was there - with some tie and some patience, perhaps the blonde and the brunette could slowly start to make amends.

That still left the question of how this entire row even got started in the first place.  Only time would tell how much of it any of them would ever truly come to know.

* * * *

"Is she okay?"

The distress in the tone of Erica Ellis' voice was obvious.  Her words seemed to be teetering on the brink of despair.  The woman could plainly hear it even from where she was eavesdropping around the corner of the hallway; Erica's question was spoken in a low and dull fashion, but it may as well have been screamed at the top of her lungs.

"She's doing fine," replied her trainer, Aimee Holbrooke, "All things considered, after getting the shit beaten out of her tonight."

The older blonde's answer was brusque; perhaps more importantly, it was completely devoid of any empathy or patience.  She was monumentally pissed off, and made absolutely no bones about letting her feelings be known.

"Can I see her?"

A new emotion was seeping into Erica's voice: regret.  It had only been maybe a half hour or an hour since the end of the fight, but the blonde was already beginning to recognize the severity of what had transpired in the ring that night.  And now here she was, standing outside of her defeated opponent's dressing room, hoping that she could undo what had already been done.  The feeling was absolutely excruciating, and the woman was reveling in every second of it.

Aimee remained unmoved.  "It's not going to help.  Whatever you're thinking, it won't wave a magic wand and set everything back the way it was."

The woman knew that she shouldn't have been there backstage.  She knew that it was an unnecessary risk, and that it was more prudent to keep her distance.  If anyone saw her or recognized her, then it wouldn't take much to connect the dots and figure out what she'd done.  All of that effort she'd put into it would blow up in her face.  But at the same time, she couldn't resist watching it as it all unfolded.  She peeked her head around the wall and stole a furtive glance at the culmination of her handiwork.  She wanted to see it with her own two eyes as the blonde's heart got ripped out.

Erica was practically begging now.  "Please.  I... I just... I want to make things right with Whitney."

"I swear, we never had any of this happen back when you were just boxing," Aimee caustically answered, "But with everything else you've had going on, trouble always seems like it's been one step behind you.  Well, tonight it caught up to you, and she's the one who's paying for it."

That's right, Erica.  Get fucked.  The woman just barely managed to avoid speaking her thoughts out loud and giving herself away.

The older blonde's demeanor shifted just slightly as she seemed to recognize that she'd gone overboard.  "Alright.  None of us seem to be quite in our right state of mind, and we shouldn't do anything to dig ourselves in deeper.  I'll do what I need to in order to look after Whitney tonight, and when we're all thinking more clearly, we'll come back to set everything straight.  Okay?"

Aimee turned back and opened the door to head into the dressing room, closing it behind her without offering another word.  Whether or not Erica managed to catch a glimpse inside to see Whitney, the woman couldn't tell.  In any case, the blonde was all alone now it seemed, lingering on where she stood as she was left to grapple by herself with the outcome of the night's events.  Her composure did not change dramatically, but even the smallest nuance of her body language revealed just how badly she'd been hurt.

It couldn't have worked out any more perfectly than that.

Slinking back around the corner and out of view, Ari Canizales was positively beaming with the most wicked of grins as she too turned to leave.  At the very start of this scheme, she'd prepared herself to expect that not everything might go as anticipated, and that there were any number of points along the way at which things could have petered out or hit a dead end.  But every break that came ended up swinging in her favor, be it Whitney's naiveté as she was getting catfished into believing that she was conversing with Elliot, or Erica's inability to stop her competitive drive from getting the better of her once the fight was on.  And that was to say nothing of the way that these two pummeled each other in the ring - truly, that was just icing on the cake at this point.

At the end of the night, what truly mattered was that a very important lesson had been imparted.  Perhaps Erica would never recognize it explicitly, but she definitely had been taught it implicitly - if her actions were meant to fuck with Ari's affairs, then hers would get fucked over a thousand fold in return.

Ari smiled to herself as she continued to walk away.  It didn't matter how many times the blonde had to be taught; she would gladly do it again and again and again until Erica had learned her place.