[Fiction] Joining the Ranks

[z-Brawlzilla]

She was afraid. Her hands shook, even when she clasped them together and pressed. In the silence of the locker room, there was the near-constant squeak of leather, and it was coming from her.

Brawlzilla was not in the room, and Sally was terrified. "Stand up," she ordered herself with a trembling voice that was raw with fear. Instead of inspiring her, her voice turned her guts to water. I can't do this! she thought, shaking even harder.

She looked the part. She was in her trademark red leather with the black barbed wire design crawling up her legs. Her red leather bra emphasized her upper physique, a sight which usually fascinated and frightened viewers. Her prop barb wire wound tight around her arms, and the fake blood had already been added to give realism to the prop. She looked as mean as a bear and as tough as brick and mortar.

It didn't help her. Inside, she was still the frightened woman whose mind kept cruelly reminding her of the beating she took last time. "I have to do this," she muttered. "It's all I have left since I got ugly. I have to do this."

The Mite burning through her veins doesn't help either. Normally, the boost she got from the drug helped her in the ring, but today it was adding to her fear, her heart racing as she tried to be strong.

I'll just tell the doc that I can't do this, Sally thought desperately, hope surging in her chest as she sees an out. But almost immediately, she stopped that line of thought. If she didn't go out there, she's ruined. Jobbers who back out of matches don't get hired for them anymore. If she didn't do this, she could forget about the XWF. She'd have to fight in one of the smaller wrestling organizations, and she'd become their resident freak. Granted, she was a freak here, too, but she was a XWF freak.

And then her strength returned when she heard herself think, Max would do it. Stellar would do it. No matter how afraid they were, you know they'd get out there, and they'd do their job.

Brawlzilla surged to her feet just as the technician called her name. Head high, shoulders back, she walked toward the arena and left her fear behind.

[Mithril]

Meghan "Girl Made of Titanium" Cutter paced anxiously outside the locker room.

"What could be taking her so long?" she muttered as she paced, careful not to stray too far from the door. Meghan worried needlessly that Brawlzilla might somehow get to the ring without rendezvousing with her first. That was, of course, impossible since their "surprise" tag-team had been carefully planned in advance by XWF management.

"Cuteness and ugliness, defense and offense, grace and power, charm and rancor" the suits had explained it to her, breaking their plan down into overly-simple binaries. Meghan was there to provide a fetching smile, to absorb stupefying amounts of damage, and to provide a startling twist to what the fans would have expected to be a rather ordinary undercard match.

As Meghan turned on her heel and paced toward the locker room door once more, Nathan, one of the stage technicians waved to her from his post there.

"Time, Miss Cutter," he said, waving.

Meghan smiled and half-trotted to where he stood. Nathan mumbled something into his headset and grasped the locker room's doorknob.

"Be right back," he explained, "Just stay loose." He slipped into the locker room. Meghan bounced lightly on her toes and waited for Brawlzilla to emerge.

[z-Brawlzilla]

Brawlzilla stepped into the hallway after Nathan, the door to the locker room swinging shut behind her. Her companion in this bout stood near, and Brawlzilla gave the silvered woman a nod. "Are you ready?"

As she waited for Meghan's reply, Brawlzilla wondered if she was really ready for this. Going into the ring was one thing; letting some metallic chic-

Push it aside. You're a professional XWF warrior, Brawlzilla reminded herself. If this is what management wants, then this is what they get. Despite her brave thoughts, Brawlzilla can feel her pulse pound in her veins.

And though she's still full of misgivings, she held her hand out for Meghan to grab. She was, after all, a professional.

[Mithril]

Meghan took Brawlzilla's proffered hand and concentrated on the shape that she'd worked out with the marketing genuises in the XWF. Her expression and surface features melted away as she momentarily became an amorphous body of liquid titanium metal, and then she flowed onto Brawlzilla's body.

A moment later, Brawlzilla appeared to be alone again, but this time wearing a thick breastplate and fauld which accented her hips, waist, and breasts, all of it bearing an intricate bas-relief design of snarling gargoyles, werewolves, and other assorted nightmare creatures. Enormous attached pauldrons extended from her shoulders, and when Brawlzilla raised her arms, fluted metal vanes articulated across her shoulderblades like gothic bat's wings.

Meghan adjusted her weight, so that the massive-appearing body armor weighed no more than a textbook, and since she was still as pliable and flexible as ever, Brawlzilla's movement was not impaired in the least.

"Ready!" Meghan exclaimed, speaking from a nonspecific point on her body. Even though she lacked a mouth, it sounded as if she was standing right there.

Just take a pounding for a few minutes, she reminded herself, and then spring into action when it looks like she's in trouble. Piece of cake.

[z-Brawlzilla]

Trouble started before Meghan expected it; for some reason, Sally started to freak out well before they reached the ring. "What do you mean, Bricktron can't be here?"

"His wife was in a car accident," Nathan said, frowning up at the scowling woman. "So Gladius is subbing in for him."

Brawlzilla staggered as if she had been hit. "Gladius?" she gasped. "I'm fighting Gladius?"

"Yeah, no one told you until now?" Nathan asked, flipping through the clipboard. "Well, it's been crazy with the scramble to find someone else. I guess it fell through the cracks. Still, he's been informed of the set-up; I did it personally, so no worries."

Meghan could hear Sally's heart pounding, but before anything could be said, Nathan pressed a hand to his earpiece. "You need to be on your mark in thirty seconds. Go!"

Automatically, Sally moved to her mark, pausing right behind the curtian that hid her from the fans. "You okay?" Meghan asked.

"Fine," Sally said unconvincingly, "I just don't like Gladius very much. He fucked me up bad, last time. But he should be nicer this time; management rode him pretty bad after the last time." The first chords of Drake's Fire's Mean Bitch rolled over the sound system, and Brawlzilla shoved through the curtians, roaring as loud as she could.

Gladius was already in the ring, and Sally felt herself go weak. No! You can do this! Max could do this! So could Stellar! The thought of her friends bolstered her yet again and she dropped into a defensive stance, moving closer to him.

He came at her in a rush without any of the banter he'd shown last time, and Brawlzilla staggered to the side trying to get away from him. His fist slammed into the armor, knocking her backwards. And it didn't hurt.

Brawlzilla blinked in surprise, touching her armor hesitantly. "You ok?" she whispered to Meghan.

"Doing great," her armor said cheerfully. "Go get 'im!"

"Then it's time for some payback!" Brawlzilla screamed, launching herself at the other fighter with glee. If he couldn't hurt her, she was going to enjoy this very much indeed.

[Mithril]

From her vantage point on Brawlzilla's torso, Meghan enjoyed the match up close. Gladius had not expected Brawlzilla to get up so quickly from his opening slam, and she retaliated with a savage series of roundhouse punches punctuated by a snap kick to his solar plexus. Gladius kept his feet, but barely.

This changes things, he thought grimly, recalculating the odds. He'd hauled off and punched her square in the middle of that stupid breastplate of hers, and all he had to show for it was a set of sore knuckles. The two warriors circled cautiously, each one formulating a plan of attack and defense based on the sudden change in the balance of power.

Brawlzilla pounced first, driving off her left leg and extending her right fist, attempting a power jab which would snap a baseline's head from his shoulders.

No armor on your head, Gladius thought, as he sidestepped the jab and popped Brawlzilla in the left ear with his left fist. Bone met gristle with a satisfying crunching sound, and Brawlzilla spiralled to the mat like a top that had lost its spin.

Like a top, Brawlzilla did not stop moving when she contacted the mat. She rolled away from Gladius and came to her feet, crouched with her left hand on the canvas and her right on her ear. She felt blood there, and held her hand in front of her face. To her surprise, there was a lot of blood on her fingers, and she could feel it dripping hotly down her neck and onto her shoulder.

[z-Brawlzilla]

The jab took some of her rage away, boiling it down into a cautious anger. Sally had let herself forget that he was still a nova. Worse, her ear was ringing, and her head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it. Her vision blurred and she shook her head. Damn it.

She could hear the commentators talking; in the previous fight, Gladius would already be on top of her. Today, the imperiously handsome man just stood back, watching her, waiting.

She rose to her feet and approached Gladius cautiously, all too aware that he was also fond of grappling. He probably wasn't trying for that right now because of her armor; knowing who and what it was would make Brawlzilla think twice about trying for a clinch. So that's the answer.

He moved to meet her, a cocky grin on his arrogant face. "Not so tough without your boyfriend, are you?" he mocked, his voice too soft to really be heard. "If you win, do you get to put the paper bag on again for a victory fuck?"

Brawlzilla didn't answer; she took advantage of his banter to dodge in close to him, straining for the first steps of a grab. She hooked one arm around him, but he jerked back, snarling angrily. Brawlzilla barely missed getting hit in the head by two more aggressive swings; as it was, her desperate blocks left her arms numb.

She was getting backed across the Zone, and she knew that she was running out of room. Gladius would get her in a corner where she would have to take his beating. Screw that - she wouldn't be boxed in.

He punched, a lazy swing that was supposed to drive her back. Instead, Brawlzilla caught his wrist and stepped into space, grabbing at his chest. She couldn't hold for long, but she didn't need to, really. The second she felt her torso slam into his, she shouted, "Meghan!"

[Mithril]

Oh yuck, sweaty, Meghan thought in disgust as she was pressed against Gladius' torso.

"Meghan!" Brawlzilla shouted more urgently as she struggled to hold on to the larger nova.

With inhuman fluidity, Meghan allowed her body to spill to the mat like a large dollop of viscous liquid metal. She reformed in her ordinary teenaged girl shape behind Gladius, already kneeling on the mat on her hands and knees. As they'd practiced, Brawlzilla reversed her grapple on Gladius and shoved him over the crouching Meghan.

Taken by surprise by the sudden shift, Gladius fell over backward, collapsing to the mat in an awkward heap. Meghan had had no time to move out of the way, and she found herself pinned under his tree-trunk legs, face down in the canvas.

That's not quite how we planned, she thought wryly.

The crowd, only moderately engaged in the match up to this point had suddenly become electrified by Meghan's startling entrance and display of shapeshifting.

Brawlzilla capitalized on Gladius' momentary disorientation by leaping into the air and allowing hseself to fall at him with her elbow pointed at his ribcage. The sudden eclipse of the powerful overhead lights alerted Gladius, and he rolled away. Brawlzilla's elbow missed the mark, and she landed bodily atop Meghan, who reacted with an exaggerated "Oof!"

Meghan rolled left and Brawlzilla rolled right, and they took their feet as one. Gladius faced them, crouched in the ready position with his arms akimbo.

Meghan glanced to her right where Brawlzilla stared straight ahead at Gladius.

"What now?" she asked Brawlzilla.

"Plan B." Brawlzilla replied immediately, not taking her eyes from their opponent.

"What's plan B?"

"Wing it!" Brawlzilla shouted as she lunged at Gladius once more.

[z-Brawlzilla]

Brawlzilla really hoped that Meghan wouldn't hesitate as she lunged at Gladius. She swung hard at him, hoping to catch him off-guard. And she did, a powerful blow which knocked him a step away from her. He was back almost instantly, backhanding her, carelessly knocking her away and facing Meghan. Brawlzilla tumbled into the fall and came up facing him.

He was ignoring her so that he could focus on Meghan. And it was hard to ignore the form that she had taken: a tall, spindly creature towered over Gladius, a nightmarish version of a praying mantis, done in silver.

The crowd screamed their approval at the appearance of this horror as Gladius materialized his power shield. He danced to one side of Meghan, lunging back only to pound one of his iron-hard fists into a leg. A scythe-like claw slashed at him, and he caught it on the shield.

The next claw caught his shoulder, and Gladius grunted with pain. Dropping into a roll, he came underneath her belly and kicked upward, slamming his feet into her with his massive strength. There was no pain for Meghan, but she could feel that damage was done to her body.

Gladius rolled forward as Meghan spun and tried to come face-to-face, but her inexperience left her a step behind as Gladius came to his feet behind her. He raised his fist to slam it into her back, but Brawlzilla choose this moment to jump back in the fray. She caught Gladius around the waist, tripping him to the ground.

He rolled over her, almost knocking her out as his dense body crushed her. Her arms loosened, and he came to his feet. Brawlzilla, still dazed, started to roll away, but his foot was already coming down. Gladius' foot caught her in the breastbone, and the world burst into agony.

Everything narrowed down to that terrible pain in her chest. She was vaguely aware of Gladius shouting, "Stay down, bitch!" Brawlzilla heard the announcers tell the crowd that she wasn't getting back up; she tried to do so, but the best she could do was roll to her knees.

Her left arm was numb, hanging useless at her side; her right flew to her chest, automatically reaching for the pain. And then all the sounds of the Combat Zone faded away, and in the silence, Brawlzilla heard one thing: the uneven pounding of her heart.

Her only thought was, Neil was right. The Mite finally got me.

* * *

Dr. Martin cursed and hit the red button. Instantly, the Zone was bathed in a red light and a siren sounded. Despite their previous intensity, Gladius and Meghan backed away from one another.

The medical team rushed forward, hurrying to the now-still Brawlzilla. The crowd fell into a reverant hush, holding their breath, wondering if they'd see a fatality.

Dr. Martin knew that they would as soon as he touched the fallen woman; his healing power did nothing to her body. She was dead.

[z-Brawlzilla]

Dr. Martin sighed as they prepared the backboard, frowning angrily. Such a waste, to throw people to the wolves like this-

The roar of the crowd cut off his thoughts; one of the technicians had brought out the white sheet, and the crowd was either cheering or booing the move. People were always divided about how to react to a fatality, but once one idiot started screaming, it set them all off and it got loud.

A metallic scrape on the floor caught Dr. Martin's ear; he glanced down to see one of the barb-wire props trembling on the floor. It took him a full second for his quantum-fueled intelligence to recall that her props were hard rubber, at his own insistence.

"She's starting to sweat or something," the technician said suddenly, dropping the sheet that he was starting to stretch over her upper body. He extended a curious finger to touch her face-

The barbed wire snapped into motion, coiling around the technician's extended wrist. Dr. Martin watched in shock for a moment; he moved only when the technician began to scream. Desperately, the two medical personal began to pry at the wrapped wire, trying to pry it off.

The cruel wire was attached to Brawlzilla's back, just above the shoulder blades, along with another wire on the right side and two more on the left. The other three wires whipped around on the floor, looking for something. Two of them began to push against the floor, lifting the woman; the one holding the bleeding technician finally released him, joining the other wire in reaching upward. Together, they found and wrapped around a support, lifting Brawlzilla off the floor.

The crowd fell quiet; the sight of the unconscious woman suspended by the wicked wires had a sense of building tension. The seconds tickled by; Gladius finally broke and stepped forward, calling, "Brawlzilla?"

Blue eyes snapped open, falling with blazing fury on Gladius. Every muscle in Brawlzilla's body flexed and then bulged, swelling to disproportionate sizes even for Sally's disproportionate body. Her fists bunched shut, and her indrawn breath was audible in the Zone.

Brawlzilla's scream pounded through the Combat Zone, slamming into everyone with equal force. Gladius was knocked back a step; the already-injured technician had been moving away with the rest of the medical team, but he still slumped unconscious anyway, bleeding from his ears. Dr. Martin grimaced as the attack drilled into his ears, making him dizzy before his healing factor kicked in and fixed his eardrums. The audience was saved only by the sound dampeners that enclosed the Zone.

In the last echoes of her roar dying away, the thump as she dropped to her feet was very loud and very omnious. Each footstep as she approached Gladius was a warning, if the living barbed wire swaying around her wasn't warning enough.

[Ultimax]

The medics.

Gladius is fucking DEAD!!!

The wire.

What the fuck?!?!

The roar.

Oh shit!!

The footsteps.

Gladius is fucking dead.

[Mithril]

"What the fuck!" Meghan shouted, holding her head as if to calm the eddy currents still swirling inside. Brawlzilla's scream hadn't hurt her, but it sure as hell had scrambled her thoughts for a moment.

Boom, boom, boom, echoed Brawlzilla's footsteps on the tortured ferrocrete. The steady beat helped Meghan to get her bearings.

"This is not in the goddamned plan," Meghan mumbled crossly as she watched Brawlzilla's reanimated form bearing down on Gladius like the Juggernaut of Vishnu. "The match is over, everyone knows that the red light is an all-stop. Crap."

Meghan realized that she lacked the strength to stop her, and that Brawlzilla lacked the clarity of thought to listen to reason. Meghan did the only thing she could, and hoped it would be enough:

"Run Gladius!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "Fucking run already! Jesus Christ man! Get out of there!"

[z-Brawlzilla]

Someone other than Girl Made of Titanium realized that something was wrong, and vitrium panels snapped into place. Their strong walls gave Gladius a shield; Brawlzilla started as the panel separated her from her target. The hope that she might regain herself was dashed when she roared with fury and pounded her fists against the panel.

For a moment, it looked as though the panels would stop her; then Brawlzilla looked up, saw the top of the panel and reached for the edge. She should have never made it. But her body began to expand and grow, getting taller, throwing her ugliness into a clearer, more easily seen scale for the screaming crowd. Her leather ripped away from her body, giving the crowd a larger-than-life eye-full.

She vaulted the top of the panels before they could extend further, landing with over a ton of weight on the other side. She stood almost fifty feet high, towering over Gladius.

The blonde nova finally took Meghan's advice; with a snarl, he turned to run from the giant advancing toward him. Brawlzilla took four large steps and, bringing her knee high in the air, stomped on him, driving him to the ground. The ferro-concrete buckled and spider-webbed under her foot.

"She's out of control," Dr. Martin muttered. He looked around, wondering how the naked giantwould be stopped before she killed Gladius.

[z-Brawlzilla]

It took five other novas to subdue her, turning the match into a racuous free-for-all that delighted the crowds. Gladius would have been in intensive care, but Dr. Martin was able to move his condition from critical to severe.

Sally was resting and recovering in her hospital room. When she had been put in there, she had been badly bruised. Now, she was fine, healing in a matter of minutes. With the pain gone, she had time to think.

It wasn't something that she wanted, necessarily. She would have given a lot to not be in her own skin right now. The sheets stuck to her moistly, clinging to her slimy skin. I guess I'm really Slimy Sally now, she sighed.

When she had decided to become ugly again to keep wrestling, she hadn't quite counted on this turn of events. There was ugly, and then there was this.

One of the barded-wire tentacles looped lazily through the air, catching Sally's eye. She hadn't counted on this, either, and frankly, this was more disturbing.

One of the wires dropped the remote in her hand, and Sally felt her eyebrow rise. Ok, disturbing and helpful.

But the biggest problem is that she wasn't sure she was comfortable in this skin. It hardly mattered; this is what she had been given, and it was what she would work with from here on out.

In an hour, she went to the Rashoud Clinic. After that, she would come back here and continue to wrestle. In the large scale, nothing had changed for her.

Only one thing was uncertain: had she changed too much for her friends?

[Mithril]

A dull blue-grey metal medical cart in the corner of Sally's private hospital room began to roll slowly but surely under its own power, despite the fact that it had no obvious source of locomotion. It bumped up against the open door, gently pushing it shut with a firm click. A moment later, the cart changed shape and grew taller, revealing that it was in fact Meghan Cutter.

"Hiya BZ," Meghan said cheerfully, taking three steps to cross the floor to the side of Sally's bed. "I hitched a ride with the XWF peoples, but security wouldn't let me in, so I had to sneak," she explained.

"Are you feeling okay? How's life with a node treating you so far?" She asked, peering at Sally's skin and barbed tentacles as if they were the most ordinary things in the world.

[z-Brawlzilla]

"Hey, Meghan," Sally said two clown-like spots of red flushing her cheeks. "Sorry about that out there - I, um... I don't remember much after Gladius stomped on me. Sometimes when I get really mad, that happens. It'll come back, eventually. If I could see the fight, but they thought I shouldn't see the feeds just yet."

Sally grinned wryly at Meghan's question. "Well other than a killer headache being held at bay by some sweet pain-killers and quintuple vision, I'm good." At Meghan's inquisitive look, she explained, "I think that the wires are somehow sensing things - it's not what I would call vision, though my brain is usin' it that way. Like right now, I see you through my eyes and the closest tentacle, and I'm seeing what's on the TV," she pointed at the tentacle that hovered in the air, pointed at the screen, "and I'm seeing bedsheets because the two lower ones are curled by my sides under the covers.

"Other than that..." Sally trailed off. Her hands rubbed up and down her arms, creating reflective sheens in the oily residue coating her body. She was silent for a moment and when she finally spoke, there was pain in her voice. "I accepted being ugly so I could wrestle. But all I had to do was jump off a building and I could have done it anyway, and maybe been pretty, like you or Stellar." Angry, beady blue eyes meet Meghan's blank orbs as Sally said, "Someone somewhere owes me a fucking explaination."

[Mithril]

Meghan frowned in frustration.

Someone owes a lot of us an explanation, she thought wryly.

"Yeah," Meghan said absently, "someone does. But I don't think that he's around anymore."

Meghan began pacing around the room.

"I've never given a new nova a 'welcome to the club' pep talk, so I haven't learned how to be diplomatic about it yet," she said, waving her arms for emphasis. "Yeah, you got the shitty end of the stick. Poor you. Poor you, you nova."

Meghan turned on her heel, drawing herself as tall as her five and a half foot frame would allow.

"It's normal for novas who erupt with non-human features to go into a funk," Meghan explained without much sympathy. "It's a hell of an adjustment. Thanks for the compliment, but for a month after I erupted I wanted nothing more than to be made of flesh and bone again. There's still days I look in the mirror and get freaked the fuck out."

Meghan deflated slightly, and she sighed and took a half step toward Sally's bed.

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head, "I get kind of emotional about that sometimes. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, you drew a weird hand when you popped, but you popped, and what you do next will tell you who you are."

Meghan smiled and shrugged.

[z-Brawlzilla]

Sally watched and listened to Meghan, getting madder with every word. Man, fuck that! I just had my world change, and she's telling me to suck it up? Fuck that!

Except... she's right. You got screwed on the lottery - what else is new? Just do what you always do - pick it up and make the best of it. Sally nodded quietly, her face relaxing in slow degrees as she talked herself down. "Yeah, I'm gonna be glad in the long run, I think, but right now..." Her voice trailed off as she held up glistening hands. "It's just a lot to deal with."

With a shrug of thick, heavily muscled shoulders, Sally said, "Well, next I'm headed to Rashoud, then back here and getting back to wrestlin'. I mean, I can really do it now, and that will be awesome." Only one person had seen Sally look truly happy, but the expression on Sally's face that Meghan witnessed was close. "It's me. What I do, ya know? And now, I can really do it."

One of Sally's tendrils snaked forward suddenly, dragging itself up Meghan's arm. The cruel-looking metal didn't hurt, but it created an upleasant metallic rasp. "Sorry!" Sally yelped, reaching out with a hand to pull the tendril back. "I haven't quite gotten the hang of them yet."

[Ultimax]

Twenty minutes talking to XWF officials to make sure he was "ready" to talk to the Utopians that showed up because of Sally's eruption.

Fifty more minutes talking to the Utopians. Apparently there are fifteen different ways to ask "Did you know she was a latent?" Max hadn't been called a liar this many times since he told Dad that actually the dog did break the vase. At least it felt that way.

Then fifteen minutes "voluntary" (yeah, right) media face-time so that CNN and N! could have as many different faces saying how amazing it was crammed into their twenty-four hour cycle. God forbid the new humanitarian drops into North Korea get any screen time.

Then thirty more minutes trying to get through the crowd still milling around the and fifteen more getting through the hoarde at the hospital.

So, it's obvious why "I'm sorry sir, family only" didn't fly. Max really felt bad about being rude. He'd come back tomorrow and apologize. But Sally shouldn't be alone right now.

Imagine his suprise when he opened the door to find Sally awake and talking to some shiny little chick.

"Uh...hi. Is this a bad time?"

[Mithril]

Meghan spun around at the sound of the door, fearing she'd been caught where she should not be.

"Oh, Ultimax!" she said in a mixture of relief and delight. "Hi! No, not a bad time at all."

Meghan stepped to one side so that Sally could see Max framed in the doorway.

[z-Brawlzilla]

"Max," Sally said, her face softening in greeting. Now Meghan could see complete happiness on Sally's face. "Hi! I'm glad you came by."

And boy was she. Just seeing him in front of her made her feel better - until she remembered what she looked like now. Her smile faded a little and some of the joy fled her face, but her eyes didn't waver from him.

Remembering her manners, Sally said, "Ultimax, this is Girl Made of Titanium, my co-star in my last fight. Meghan, this is Ultimax, another wrestler and a friend of mine." She even managed to say 'friend' without stumbling or hesitation.

[Ultimax]

Max's face brightened up with the introduction, "Hey there....um..Girl Made of Titanium, I saw the match. You were quite the addition. Sorry your debut got overshadowed by Sally here."

He scootched by Meghan, not a mean feat given his enormous upper body and the reletively small confines of the hospital room, and stood by Sally's bed on the side opposite Meghan.

He leaned down, kissed Sally gently on the lips and asked, "You doing okay? The head hurting too much?"

[z-Brawlzilla]

He... kissed... me. Me. Max just kissed me! Sally stared up at him, too surprised to do more than blink at him. He... wants me? Me?!

He wants me... Sally managed a smile finally and answered, "It's making me wish I had died. But thankfully, I don't care about that right now, for drugs are good."

A metal tendril snaked over to him, gently caressing the side of his face. Somehow, the stinging barbs turn away from his skin, brushing his skin softly. "Thanks for coming." You already said that. "So what did you think of the fight?" You're a moron, Sally.

[Ultimax]

He chuckled, "Well....Gladius is not my favorite person right now, I'll admit that. But I gotta say, whoever designed the form that...Girl made had some very nice style. It was striking."

He pulls up a chair and gingerly lowers himself into it, testing his weight. "You're going to be a real terror now, Sally. You were already one of the more skilled fighters out there. Now you've got some serious oomph to back it up. I hope you get a good agent before signing anything. I've learned, these bastards can be evil and heinous about deals you sign."

[Mithril]

Meghan could plainly see that there was more than casual friendship between Max and Sally. She backed slowly toward the door and put her hand on the knob.

"I can see you two have a lot of catching up to do," she said suddenly, "so I'll just let myself out now. Take care BeeZee, and again, welcome to the club!"