Chapter 1:
After the events of Gang Wars in her hotel room:
Kara lay on her bed, sweating bullets and yet she felt cold. Her stomach felt like it was literally twisting in knots. Still the proud German refused to make even a tiny whimper of complaint. Luckily, she had seemed to have been successful in her attempt to convince her twin brother she was fine. He was still angry at the loss. Both twins knew they were going to lose the fight placed before them, but the manner in which it had happened was hard to take.
02:00:
Kara couldn’t get to sleep. She was starving but none of the food in her room held her interest.. Indeed, the thought of eating it made her sick to her stomach. Finally, a thought entered her mind. She picked up the tv remote and a few moments later was looking at the room service menu. She ordered steak, special instructions? Rare. Bloody and rare as possible. She blinked. She had always prefered medium or well done but for some reason she needed rare and bloody meat.
02:30
Room service finally brought her order. Kara watched the woman bring in the tray and gave her a tip. It took all her self control to wait for the room service girl to leave before eating. Kara dove in and eagerly ate the meat, being sure to pull the blood from the meat and closed her eyes as she enjoyed the taste. She noticed something. Almost immediately, her bruises and injuries from the match began to heal. Her eyes widened in shock and horror. She immediately shook it off. She was obviously imagining things. Lack of sleep combined with fatigue and pain from the match. That was it, surely. She picked up a small remote and pressed a button on it. ‘Deutschland’ by Rammstein played. This was Kara’s favorite song. It perfectly summed up her feelings as a German fighter. Wanting to be proud of her country and heritage, but her country’s…difficult history making that hard at times. She smirked. It was likely a feeling many Americans could identify with too.
She made her way to the fridge and took out a bottle of water, taking a sip as she listened and sung along to the song. When that passed she went out onto the balcony and sighed in relief as the cool desert air hit her. This place wasn’t so bad at night, though for the life of her, she would never understand why people would live during here during the day. The damable heat was insufferable. She took a second drink of water and sighed. So, liquids were still an option to her. With luck, it was just a bug. Kara found herself pacing around the room again. She was antsy. She hated being sick. As she thought about ways to deal with the problem of not being able to sleep, she grabbed the remote and turned on the TV in the hotel room, looking over the services offered. Seeing a gym, she raised an eyebrow and decided that was her next destination. Changing out of her night clothes and into civilian clothing, she made her way to the gym, a gym bag with workout clothes in hand. While she made her way to the gym, she was keenly aware of her surroundings. A few American tourists trying and failing to speak Spanish properly. A lone woman with pale skin and a decidedly gothic look to her. Not a typical tourist destination for someone like her, Kara thought. The woman was enjoying a cigarette with a holder. Kara smirked. Nice touch, she would suppose. A prostitute, also in the bar, on the lookout for customers. Valora in the bar, drinking. Evidently Kara wasn’t the only one having problems sleeping tonight. Part of her hesitated for a moment, debating on asking the woman with medical training and a well versed history and expertise in psychology to help her out. Finally, she decides to chance it, seamlessly changing her stride and making her way into the bar. She makes it over to Valora, who, being well trained also, notices her coming. Valora looks up. “Guten Nacht. Is that right?”
Kara, despite herself, laughs a bit and shakes her head. “Nein. You said good night. In Germany we only say good night when going to bed or leaving for the evening. You wanted Guten Abend, good evening… given the time, I suppose Guten Morgen could work too. When language was invented I don’t think they considered people being awake at this hour to worry about it. I wasn’t aware you spoke German.”
Valora smirked. “You’re probably right. But even if they did, they still wouldn’t have bothered to come up with new terms. As for German.. Well there was a time when your brother and I despised each other. I tried to pick up some German to better study my enemy. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent or anything. So what brings over to my table, chica?”
Kara sits down, setting her gym bag on the ground next to her. “I’m… not feeling well. I was going to try and work out in the gym, but I saw you and, after some debate.. I wanted to talk to you about it and also about the match tonight.” Valora sighs. “I charge extra for house calls.” Kara lets out a small laugh. “I’ll pay you in tequila.” Valora nods. “Deal.”
03:00 Kara’s Hotel room:
Kara was seated, Valora rested two fingers on Kara’s neck, her eyes stuck on her watch as she timed. She reaches the end and blinks in confusion, before turning to her medical bag and taking out a stethoscope and listens to Kara’s breathing and heartbeat. “Lungs are fine. Heartbeat is a bit…erratic. I’d make a joke about drug use but if you and your brother share the same sense of humor…”
Kara shrugs. “Well there was that dose of epinephrine I took before the match.” Valora lets out a small laugh. “Holy shit, she even has good comedic timing! Of course, if you were serious the exertion of two matches would likely have killed you. Alright, part of my price chica. Why ask me? UOW has physicians and trainers.” Kara nods. “Yes, but they will also report any injuries or illnesses they find. In a battle royal, I’d rather not make my job any harder.” Valora nods. “But I’m training one of your opponents. How can you be sure I won’t tell her?” Kara shrugs. “Kronin says you’re an honorable woman. He thinks you hate yourself for it. For being honorable. For being a good person.” Valora shakes her head scoffing a bit. “Course he does. Your brother’s flaw is he thinks he knows what makes everyone tick… and he’s usually wrong. I’m not an honorable person. He should know that better than anyone. As for whether I’m a good person, I’ll let others make that determination.” Kara decides to take a risk here. After all, when’s the next time she’s going to have Valora one on one like this? “So…I’m told you used to be a cop. Why’d you leave?”
Valora sighs. “Came down here to start a division of the Mexican Federal Police modeled after the FBI’s profiler unit. Turned down an offer from the FBI to do it. Came down here to find that the Mexican Federal police weren’t interested. They were more comfortable with BS superstition. “Mexico doesn’t have an serial killers because we have strong family units and serial killers only come from broken homes with little or no family support..” Valora rolls her eyes. “Still, I decided to stay on. Then one day, a cartel made a mistake. They killed someone close to me. I had my own team. All female police officers because no self respecting Mexican male police officer would take orders from a woman. Might hurt his machismo too much. They had a lot of nicknames for our team. Some cute like ‘Amazons.’ others…much less so. The nicknames stopped after that. My team and I went on the warpath. We stopped the procedure bullshit. We became Judges. Judge, Jury. Executioner. For all intents and purposes we destroyed the entire cartel. Near the end we had some help as the government saw how effective we were and ordered the Army and Federal police to declare war on the cartels. I know. I’m sure that’s horrible compared to your experience.”
Kara shrugs. “I was assigned to GSG-9. Technically, we’re police but our job is counter-terrorism. Terrorists usually don’t give you much room to bring them in alive. My first assignment was undercover work.” Valora smirks. “Probably some evil left wing group, I’ll bet.” Kara nods. “Baader-Meinhof. These weren’t the good guys. They’d want you to think they were. Talked about stealing from banks and the rich, give to the poor. What they actually stood for was chaos and anarchy. Killing anyone who didn’t share their views. They killed politicians, robbed banks, killed police, innocents, they didn’t care.” Valora nods. “So that’s why you can have a personality when you need to be.” Kara nods. “The group liked the punk rock music scene. Was soo hard explaining to Kronin why I had a mohawk colored neon pink. Valora laughs at this. “Holy shit! I’d pay money to have seen that.” Kara laughs a bit and nods. “It was an interesting look, I suppose. But yeah these guys.. If they had gotten their way, Germany would have been just like the Soviet Union. I grew up in East Germany. I know how much Communism doesn’t work. If it makes you feel better, I had undercover assignments against right wing groups too. There are terrorists on all all sides of the political spectrum. Now, for the second part of the illness bothering me…” Kara takes a deep breath. “You have any experience with mind control?”
Valora pauses in mid movement, stopping to look at her. “More than I would like to admit.” She says, crossing her arms across her chest. “Why?” Kara clears her throat a bit. “What does… err, I mean what does it feel like?” Valora sighs. “Depends on the style, I suppose. It’s all fuzzy in my head so I’m not which sure which of the events came first. But I was wrestling up in Washington State with a..a good friend of mine.. We were tag team partners, drinking buddies. I guess we never really got around to figuring out what we were. Anyhow, we had throttled this wannabe super villain. We never took him seriously. That was our first mistake. He was in the hospital. We decided to babysit him while waiting for him to be taken to jail or the insane asylum, wherever they decided to lock him up. To this day, I have no idea how he did it, but somehow he managed to inject Liz with nanites or some shit. Just like that,the one person I trusted in the world was now an aspiring super villainess. Initially she was loyal to Jonathan Mills wannabe super villain, but Mills made a mistake in trusting the wrong person and Liz ended up partners with someone far worse.. I’ll spare the details but we never shook her free. Or didn’t seem to at any rate.
Next event was my turn. Allen Anderson brainwashed me.. That was more conventional stuff, drugged me, type of stuff you see on TV or in the comics. It worked though, I was his loyal little problem solver. That felt.. Normal. I didn’t feel like I was being controlled. It all seemed perfectly natural. Why wouldn’t I be loyal to Allen Anderson? He paid me well, he admired my skill in violence and he never ever told me I needed to change. He encouraged me to enjoy the violence. To savor it. I don’t really remember how I broke free, but I know when I did I destroyed an entire floor of the building he had been keeping me in and killed I don’t know how many nameless Warhammer lackeys. This about the match?”
Kara nods. “I…don’t know what happened. I heard.. Voices in my head. Bold’s mostly.. But a woman’s voice too. I didn’t want to listen but I had to.” Valora nods. “Well, the closest thing I can think of to that is forms of telepathy. Vampire hypnosis, magic. Again, shit you see in the movies or comics.” Kara nods. “I.. I’m hungry as hell but the only thing I could eat was rare meat.” Valora makes a impromptu cross with her fingers and both women laugh. Valora smirks. “Seriously chica. You have a history of anemia? Iron deficiency?” Kara blinks in confusion. “Could it be that?” Valora shrugs. “Probably not, but it’s not unheard of for people to try and make up for those two by eating red meat, especially rare and bloody meat. Again, mostly superstition and not likely to actually help you, but the human mind and body can get weird sometimes. I’m gonna assume you don’t normally hear voices?” Kara gives Valora a deadpan look. “Wait…. I thought it was okay to hear voices just as long as I don’t answer them. Are you saying it’s bad both ways?” Valora smirks. “Yeah chica.. Usually a bad thing. Seriously, you gotta teach your brother some comedy. Get him to take that stick out of his ass.” Kara nods. “Be careful what you wish for.. He takes the stick out his ass, he might start beating people to death with it.”
04:00:
Kara lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Valora had left a while ago and Kara had tried again to get to sleep, once more without success. She had a battle royal to get ready for and that was going to be even harder to do if she couldn’t get to sleep. It would be a losing battle for another couple of hours until the sun started to come up, only then did Kara finally drift off to sleep.