She shoved through the crowd, ignoring the shouts and cheers from the sweaty people she ran in to. When she shoved too hard, one of them fell backwards and simply made a bigger path for her to walk. There was no point trying to be gentle; this wasn't the kind of crowd where one apologized. This was the kind of place you stabbed and bit and kicked to get better seats. This was The Cage.
Here people fought, killed, gambled, sold other people, and never ever told anyone. Not after the last time. No one was stupid enough to risk it.
Maybe the cops raided The Cage, and maybe they managed to take over the building, shut down the business, and imprison all the criminals, mercenaries, and murderers, but they'd sure as hell never catch the boss.
He didn't come to The Cage, but that didn't mean he wasn't watching. Boss saw everything. And every time his business was shut down, he made damn sure it came back, and when it did, he always went after the foolish kid who tipped off the men in blue. And he didn't just let them die.
Here no one heeded the written law. The Cage had its own set of unspoken rules: kill or be killed; fight when challenged or be killed; bet large sums of money on one of the fighters or be killed; never tell the cops or be killed.
Simple rules, really.
She was a fighter. A regular. A Cage Princess, as the announcer would say. There hadn't been a week in the last year her feet hadn't stalked up the stairs on the side of the fenced-in stage, taking her to a death match on the bloody mat in the middle.
All for a cut of the money the boss earned off the bets.
He had his own rules-the boss that is. When you won your bet, you got your money back and nothing more. When you lost your bet, your money went to the boss and he gave the winning fighter a cut-however much he felt they deserved for the show. When you didn't bet, you didn't live.
So people always gambled. The stupid ones bet on the other fighter. The smart ones bet on her.
You could tell who didn't frequent the rowdy establishment simply by who they bet on. The newbies assumed she couldn't fight. She was too little, looked too sweet, acted too civilized. They either bet on the other kid, or they challenged her, lost, and often died in the process.
No, she didn't feel bad killing them. How could she? One at a time she was ridding the world of nasty criminals. But that's not the reason she did it. Just like every other slimy creep in the establishment, she went for the thrill, for the adrenaline rush, for the fight, and often for the money.
She went because she needed a release, people to beat the crap out of that no one would care about when the homeless found them stacked up out back the next morning.
But that didn't mean she liked the crowds, and it especially didn't mean that she liked being touched by said crowds. When people got too close, she didn't bother to resist the itch in her bones telling her to kick them where it hurts.
She could see the doors now, just shove a few more people and she'd be through them. The noise would be muted slightly once they shut behind her and she'd have a semblance of privacy while she stripped off her clothes and changed, but the tension in her shoulders wouldn't ease until she was gone, until she was out of this rundown warehouse and somewhere with lights that didn't flicker, beams that didn't creak, ceilings that didn't fall down in chunks.
She'd tried to stop going once. She'd even put in enough effort to get a job and an apartment, but at some point, about a month in at her new work, she'd forgotten how to pretend she enjoyed being normal, and she hadn't been able to stop herself from punching her coworker right in the mouth. Somehow she managed not to laugh when he spit out his perfect teeth and shouted at her in his sloppy British accent. She'd been fired on the spot.
That night she fought. The boss had let her stay in the cage for more fights than the regulars were allowed. Maybe he knew how much she needed it. Or maybe he just liked to watch her tear through men like some kind of crazed animal. Either way, she didn't complain.
She felt something grab hold of her waist, and the idiot who dared touch her regretted it half a second later when they went flying across the floor, knocking a few others down in the process. The Cage Princess often thought of the crowds here as bowling pins. They were crammed so tight together that if one fell over, others were bound to follow.
She didn't bother turning around to assess the damage as she pulled open the doors and slammed them behind her. It was always this way. People bit and punched and pushed their way close to her and she pushed them right back. Gamblers tried to meet her, fans tried to molest her, challengers tried to kill her so they didn't have to fight her on the mat, and perverts and prostitutes tried to keep her for the night.
The Cage was a nasty place, but she'd learned to adapt. No one was going to question her if she pummeled random people. They were in The Cage. It was called for. When you came, you didn't just bet your savings, you bet your life.
Boss was considerate to his money makers though. Only fighters were allowed in the back rooms, and while the holes in the walls didn't really make it private, it was less crowded. Not many people stayed in the back because not many people were daring enough to become frequent fighters. She was the only Cage Princess these days, and there were only around seven Cage Princes.
Most of the other princesses mysteriously disappeared over the last year, and the same goes for the absent princes. She figured they had upset the boss in some way.
Cage fighters weren't easy to replace, but the boss seemed to take some extreme pleasure in ridding the world of the ones he didn't like. And when he lacked the creativity to plot their deaths, he just waited for the bell to ring and left the dirty work to the cage royalty.
She refused to notice the others in the room as she stripped off her tight tank and tore out her braids, shaking her short pink locks loose in an effort to hide the reopened gash on the side of her face. Ino would be mad if she saw that the stitches had come undone again; she'd made that very clear the last three times it'd happened.
She knew people were staring at her, but that didn't keep her from pulling off her shorts and standing in nothing but her underwear and bra. It didn't matter to her. As long as they didn't try to touch her, she didn't care if they saw her. Besides, her underwear could practically be considered a pair of shorts anyway. If she wrestled professionally, that's all she'd wear in the ring.
Haphazardly she threw on a lose sweatshirt and a pair of sweats from her bag, not bothering with socks when she pulled on her shoes.
She left out the back window. It took some climbing and a bit of acrobatics to get there, but it was way better than trying to push through the crowd and out the front doors.
Ino was waiting for her, perched on one of the many shipping crates when she dropped out the window, soundlessly landing on the slick pavement below.
They didn't talk. They never did around here. Ino knew she had won her fights; she was alive. She also knew that her pink-haired friend reopened the stitches she'd had to get after last week's brawl; her hair was in her face. And judging by the bulge in her front pocket, she'd earned a bit of money tonight.
This was their life now. Walking home through the bad part of town, making money in illegal ways, always fighting, always running, keeping guns in the waistband of their pants and knifes in the sides of their shoes.
They hadn't planned to be this way, but they weren't going back. Ino had asked a couples times, "Sakura... Do you want to go home?"
No one would think it possible to put so much emotion into a two letter, one syllable word.
"No."
She wasn't going back. This was her now. This was where she belonged. Killing and lying and getting revenge were her skills, and damn did she find the right job to match her abilities. And there was no way Ino was going to leave her friend to deal with this dangerous life all by herself. So they were stuck here in this crazy city living a criminal's night life and pretending things were fine.
All because of him.
Hmmmm... well... That's chapter one. If you liked it I'd love if you'd give me some suggestions. Yup! That's all. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it!