【 west valley, 2018 】
━━ tw mentions of torture & blood

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━━ "Svetlana!"

The girl was rapt with attention: her back stiff and her jaw clenched. Her hair was pulled back into a tight french braid that gave her a headache that she ignored, per usual. Her youthfulness was gone, gaunt features marring her pretty face ... or making it more sharper and more attractive, depending on who you asked. Either way, she was so still, it was as if she did not exist.

The Soldier was never a good sign.

Svetlana followed him to a separate room. Her footsteps were light and intentional. ( She was a quick learner, for the last time she tripped, the Soldier left bruises on her wrist that took over a month to heal. ) His titanium arm reflected the dim hallway lights, though the red star caught most of it.

In the room were two men, a stark age difference between the pair. The older man was fully awake: his hair was graying and he had crow's feet around his eyes. ( Mid fifties if she had to guess. ) He was bleeding from the back of his head, but he maintained a cool composure. The younger one was nineteen, maybe twenty. He was crying, and strapped to a chair with a tableside tray with various metal instruments and liquid vials. He looked to the man across from him, as if he was begging for him to help him.

They had the same aquiline nose and the same green eyes. It was easy enough to guess that it was a father and a son that sat in front of her.

The Soldier silently ordered Svetlana to go to the boy while he went to the man. The Soldier started speaking short sentences in French. He was looking for information about state secrets within the European Union.

It clicked for Svetlana how she knew the man: he had previously worked with General Dreykov. Then, he had made an enemy out of the General.

He stayed silent. His eyebrow twitched and looked half-tempted to spit on the Soldier, but thought better of it. The Soldier glanced at Svetlana, and she picked up a syringe and an orange vial. She flicked the air bubbles out of the needle, and inserted it beneath the boy's right thumbnail. He screamed, for the solution entered into his bloodstream was designed for torture. It would make an already painful situation so much worse.

The father tensed at the sound of his child's screams. He started cursing both the nine year old girl and her handler, claiming that they were not worthy of eating his shit. The Soldier tilted his head at Svetlana, and she picked up the pliers.

Starting with the right thumbnail.

Stevie spun a pen between her fingers, trying to suppress the boy's screams in her head. It blended with the chemistry class laughing at the newest student walking through the door. Stevie wasn't paying much attention to them in favor of burning a hole into the dead pig in front of her. The butterfly knives that were a near permanent fixture on her person lent itself to the ease of mindlessly twisting the pen in her hand.

The teacher spoke up, readying the class for the dissection and dismissed them into their groups. Stevie was alone in the back corner of the classroom as usual. ( Naturally, she had scared anyone who went for the table away, as she did for every class. Not even Miguel ventured to join her in class, even if he does leave occasional notes on the desk she claimed. )

The teacher spoke out to the class once more, this time, Samantha LaRusso by his side, "Oh, who wants to take Samantha in? This little piggy needs a group." Stevie looked up to the front, the spinning pen never faltering. Aisha had spoken about her childhood best friend often, her tone always switching between longing and contempt.

Stevie wasn't entirely sure what she thought of the girl. The latter half of freshman year, she remembered her with Aisha, a nerdy pair that no one bothered and seemed incapable of abandoning the other. Something that had changed sophomore year with her focus on the popular crowd, despite Samantha's attempts to shut down the harassment they often threw Aisha's way.

"Don't all volunteer at once." The teacher spoke once again when the entire class sat quietly, trying to hide their snickering and the popular girl's fall from grace.

You don't know what you think about her?

Find out.

The pen stopped spinning, and she raised it lazily above her head, "I'll take her."

This time, the snickering stopped. Stevie looked bored as she flipped the pen into her hand. To her credit, Samantha only looked slightly uncomfortable at the idea of working with her in the back. She dropped her backpack on the floor beside her, and sat in the permanently vacant chair.

"Thank you," Samantha was pleasant, if not guarded. Stevie just hummed and went back to spinning the pen in her hand once more. Her eyes were narrowed on the scalpel on the tray beside the pig. Meanwhile, Samantha slid her gloves on with a practiced ease while waiting for the instructions.

Quietly, she leaned slightly closer to her, "Did you want to do any of the dissection?" Stevie didn't do more than move her eyes to the corner, so Samantha was in her peripheral vision. She never letting the scalpel leave her line of sight. The boy did not cross her mind, despite her hands having been the ones to cut into him with the tool, but the girl.

"Cassiopeia! Cut open the wound!"

Aquila's hissed demands rang in her ears. The squelching of her fingers in a separate wound, pulling out blood clots and debris. Andromeda had sat on the leg to keep it still. Orion's hands were borderline shoved into the girl's mouth to keep her screams to a minimum in the wait for their getaway car. Cassiopeia herself dragged a scalpel down the girl's thigh, a preventative attempt to keep the fragments of metal from causing uncontrolled tears, and make a crude repair of the struck femoral artery before the girl bled out.

It hadn't mattered in the end.

The girl died anyways.

Orion had gone in guns blazing and triggered an explosion where the girl was slipping in.

Stevie didn't even realize she had shaken her head, as she was processing this newfound aversion to the instrument. Scalpels suddenly reminded Stevie of missions. The most twisted version of girlhood. It reminded her of failures that she was punished for, even if she didn't have a damn thing to do with it.

She watched as Samantha made the first incision down the pig's chest. Stevie was surprised to see how steady her hands were in cutting the fetus, even making a Y cut.

The scientists, employed by General Dreykov, often made those cuts on the dying girls.

In truth, Stevie didn't know when the pen stopped spinning. Samantha had gotten everything cut up and pinned down, exposing its cartilage skeleton and shrunken organs. They had remained rather quiet: Samantha filling out the worksheet while Stevie ignored the paper.

Eventually, the former had broken the silence, "What were you thinking for sex?"

Stevie just side-eyed her, but she had already answered her own question, "This tract is near the umbilical cord, so I think ours is male."

She did not speak, but she hummed in agreement. She didn't go to write anything down, her sheet remaining blank. There was a tense silence for a moment, but Samantha was not interested in sitting in it.

"Thanks for, um ... helping me out, by the way."

That time, Stevie did turn to face her. She watched as Samantha studied her face. Her light eyes followed every contour. She watched as Samantha swallowed a lump in her throat.

"With what, exactly?" It was the first time Stevie had spoken since she volunteered to take Samantha as a partner. Samantha wasn't entirely sure if the malice in her eyes was just the way she looked at people, or if she had a particular vehemence for her. She had never been close enough for her to know.

"With the fight ... I know it didn't have anything to do with me, not for you, but I appreciate it nonetheless."

Stevie looked at her. Of course, she looked cold as she always did. However, she hardly harbored any more distaste for Samantha than she did any other person she came across. Any additional resentment was related to Aisha's stories that she would only listen to for the sake of b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶m̶a̶i̶l̶ knowledge.

"Kyler was going to get put down, one way or another." Stevie's voice dropped, sounding rather casual as if Kyler getting his ass handed to him was a fact of life. She even began filling out the worksheet with the pen she had dropped. She labeled and answered everything correctly, even things Samantha hadn't worked through out loud.

"I didn't see anyone else try to do anything ... besides him." Samantha pointed her chin over to Miguel, who looked invested in the lab with the mouthy nerd he considered a friend.

Stevie hated that her grip tightened around the pen. She stayed quiet, intending to ignore Samantha.

"He had a pretty nice roundhouse," Samantha mentioned offhandedly, "...yours was better."

She shrugged off her words, entirely ignoring the compliment thrown at her, "It was fine, considering he just started, but he—"

"He telegraphed his sweep." Stevie stopped writing, her eyebrow slightly raised.

Samantha would know a thing or two about what that looked like, wouldn't she? Stevie turned to face her, and the girl looked casual in her critique, opting to bite the end of her pen while staring at Stevie's worksheet.

"He was lucky that those neanderthals are a bunch of fucking idiots."

Samantha snorted before countering her, "He was lucky you noticed it, and kept them on the defense." Stevie narrowed her eyes at her, unsure if she despised this girl or was beginning to have a begrudging respect for her. Her eyes turned to finish the paper and she wrote quietly for a moment.

"Then why didn't you take care of it, little champion?" Stevie asked, messy cursive left in the wake of her pen before setting it down. Stevie faced Samantha, and bore a neutral expression, studying how her blue eyes widened at the nickname.

Samantha asked how she knew about that, and Stevie couldn't exactly tell her that she had done a deep dive on her background as she did with many people in the Valley. She couldn't exactly mention how she knew that she began learning karate because Nariyoshi Miyagi had convinced her by gifting her a beagle named Penny.

Even if she didn't have any of that background, Stevie saw the way her fists clenched. How easily she had slammed Kyler's lunch tray to the floor. She could have handled that herself; she just didn't get the chance.

"Your dad's name is all over town, and his ability to ❛ kick the competition ❜. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out," Stevie lied through her teeth, and she did so easily. After she said that, Samantha was quiet.

Too quiet.

Almost like she stopped breathing.

Samantha, then, let out a sharp exhale before quietly responding to, what Stevie thought, was a basic observation, "Nobody else bothered to."

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━━ The slip of paper weighed heavy in the gi pocket she wore. Stevie had already memorized the number. Samantha LaRusso told her to call her on this number when she was available to work on their project, and to call her Sam when she did.

Stevie was unlikely to do either thing. She would tell her at school, if necessary, and Sam?

Really?

She didn't have the words to say how much she hated that idea.

"Okay, everybody fall in," Johnny called out to the significantly emptier dojo, seeming crestfallen. She thought that they had the right idea. Every day she had stayed, she had regretted it a little bit more.

"Where's everyone? Crater face? Nose ring? Slingshot?" Johnny's eyes had fallen to Miguel, as if he had all of the answers.

All Miguel could do was shrug, "They quit, sensei."

"I wonder why," Stevie muttered under her breath as her head fell backwards. She could feel eyes on her.

Johnny snapped at her, "What was that, Fleetwood?"

Stevie opened her eyes as she rolled her head around, her voice sharper, "I said, I wonder why, Jessie." She could hear a sharp intake of air from someone in the class, but her eyes didn't waver from Johnny.

Let him try and 'put her in her place.'

Let her remind him and everyone in this class that she is, and always has been, in a league of her own within this godforsaken city.

Johnny's jaw clenched and looked as if he was fighting the urge to throw her into the wall. In the end, he simply ignored her. Had it been just the two of them ( maybe Miguel and Aisha ), he would have no hesitations about attacking her, regardless of how it would end up. But he lost half of his class in a day.

Better to have a bruised ego rather than straight up bruises, given by a sixteen year old.

"You know what, good," Johnny looked back to Miguel and the rest of the class, "Because that was a test, I wanted to see who the quitters were."

Stevie scoffed quietly, allowing her eyes to wander around the dojo. Her tongue was pressed against the back of her teeth. Johnny kept yapping until he brought Lip into the conversation. Standing next to Miguel, she could see the way he tensed up. Despite how lowly Stevie thought of his choice of friends, Miguel still cared about him.

Eli was quiet and his voice wobbled a little bit, "Could you please not call me that?"

Johnny narrowed his eyes at the boy ... and he wondered why so many people left ... "Excuse me, what?"

"I said, could you please not call me that?" Apparently, the boy had tried to take a page out of her book. A stupid decision, really, considering he couldn't even throw a punch. Stevie could get away with speaking that way to Johnny because he has never even landed a hit on her. 

Eli was not Stevie.

Miguel tried to break the tension and start warming up, but Johnny was not interested, "Lip has something he wants to say ... speak up, Lip. Or is your tongue messed up too? Are you one of those challenged kids?" The barrage of insulting questions were enough to make Stevie side-eye him.

Eli's tail had gone between his legs, "The doctor said I could be on the spectrum." Any hint of boldness had been stamped out, and he avoided eye contact with the sensei.

Johnny's face had blended anger and confusion, "I don't know what that is, but get off of it, pronto? Alright? If you don't want me to call you Lip, then don't have a weird lip. Can't you get surgery for that?"

Johnny was one of the few people in her life who managed to surprise her. Every time she thought she had seen the peak of his idiocy, he had managed to do something that made him look even more stupid. Stevie rubbed her temples in an attempt to massage the headache away.

That slip of paper with Samantha's phone number was starting to look really good if that meant she could avoid spending more time around Johnny.

Stevie realized how tightly she was clenching her jaw once the bell rang throughout the dojo. Eli had left, and Johnny rolled his eyes, complaining about yet another quitter as if he wasn't the reason he was losing students at record speed.

Miguel looked let down that the other member of his group left, considering it was him and Demetri who he wanted to join more than anyone in the first place. Stevie bit her tongue: she wouldn't remind him of her words, and how they let him down, yet again.

Stevie just did Miguel the courtesy of letting him know that she wouldn't be attending tomorrow's practice, so she could work on that science project with ... Sam. Another damper on his mood before he went to talk to Johnny. She wouldn't say anything about the fact that she wasn't sure if she would come back.

━━ unpopular opinion: i am on the samantha larusso defense squad. i didn't particularly care about her in the beginning, but holy fuck. the sheer amount of hate she gets has turned me into one of her biggest defenders. i won't accept any slander about her on this page now. if you wanted to mention somewhat valid critiques about her character, sorry. can't do it on my page. you can thank the bitches that keep body shaming mary and slutshaming sam. should anybody call sam any variation of ham lapusso, pls go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

━━ ...anyways, hope y'all enjoy this chapter. if you are interested in looking at any of my tiktok fanfic edits, my user is @zozoleesi.wp. it's a lot of mevie love, some appreciation of the final class, and a few depressy edits as nat could probably attest to. if you would dts on them, drop your tt user here, i'd be happy to see y'all there