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The locker room is empty and they all shower together, Alexa making Blake and Murphy go over the plan out loud one last time as they dry each other off. The boys get dressed in their normal street clothes, but Alexa only puts on a sports bra and shorts and her new boots. Just like in the ring, special occasions call for special gear. The uppers on the boots lace halfway up her calves, and the metatarsal protection makes them heavy. Alexa stretches a little bit, flexes her arches, does a couple of high-knees to get acclimated. It’s a good weight. Dressed, she pulls her hair back into a ponytail and digs the Sharpie out from the bottom of her bag.
She takes the cap off the permanent marker with her teeth and chews on it, distracted, as she gets down to business. Alexa’s handwriting is excellent and she is, by necessity, just as good at drawing with her right hand as with her left. Once Blake and Murphy are a little bit better they will be able to help her, but for now they just watch intently as she marks two rings around each of her fingers. Alexa connects the rings to each other and to the center of her palm with confident strokes of the marker, finishing her hands with a straight line that goes out to the tip of each thumb. Then she does the intricate stave on her sternum, centered over the one she draws on her stomach. The oblique symbols that chase each other down her arms. The parallel lines across the backs of her knees.
Once they are sure that the ink is dry, Blake helps her shrug into the sweatshirt, flips the hood up over her head and kisses her on the nose. Murphy zips it up, tugs on the drawstrings a little bit, grinning, and Alexa laughs when the energy starting to come off of her statics his hair up. Together they head out to the parking lot of the training center, and the boys are good at making sure that she doesn’t have to touch the doors or anything made out of metal.
It’s a warm night, humid and still, and the loudest sound is the buzzing of insects. The bright streetlights keep her from being able to see the stars when she looks up, and the sky seems pitch black with the new moon. Alexa waits in the narrow corridor between two of the buildings while Blake throws their bags in the trunk and Murphy slashes the tires on Baron Corbin’s stupid bike.
Baron Corbin might think that he is hot shit, strutting around in his ugly vest. Acting like he’s a person. Alexa knows better.
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“Why the Sharpie?” Blake asked after Alexa had shown them, that first time. She had only been with them for a couple of weeks at that point, all of them still new to each other, but Alexa had already known that she could bring them in, as her mom used to say. (“You’ll know your people when you find them.”) Murphy nodded along to Blake’s question as he cracked open the water bottle. Alexa had just brought it from the kitchen, but, well, brought wasn’t really the right word. She hadn’t physically gone and got it, but Alexa just hated using the word ‘summoned’.
“It’s the chemicals. In the solvent.” She had explained as she reached out again and flexed her hand, the one with the stave drawn on the palm. Another bottle of water flew to her hand from the counter. “Back in the day people had to mix their own ink. Still have to sometimes, for the really weird stuff. Whoever that Sharpie guy is, though, he’s one of us. Made it a lot simpler.”
---
For the most part, Alexa lives a normal life. Well. Not really. But she no longer goes in for that party line she was raised with, about how it's her duty to be a bringer of justice, a cleansing blade, just because she happens to know some shit that most civilians don't. Alexa might have over-corrected at first with all the smiles and the glitter, sure, but now she's found a happy medium. She still gets to wear as much glitter as she wants, and she keeps an eye on the freaks and weirdos in the locker room. But she doesn't have to go out of her way to hunt them down. Not unless they cross her.
(She had been willing to let Corbin keep being the worst joke in all of NXT, right up until the singles match in Ocala last month when he had hit Murphy with the End of Days and then had the audacity to laugh in her face backstage.)
Her relatively recent tolerance for strangeness other than her own is not entirely charitable. Alexa just knows better than to think the world would be fair to her if her secret got out. For example. Alexa doesn't know what the fuck Bayley is, under that headband, but Alexa is pretty sure that the other woman is somehow drawing power from the crowd, from the hugs she solicits from her fans. It’s just as tacky as the rest of Bayley, but of course no one gives Baykey shit for it. If the rest of the locker room knew what Alexa could do, they would never let her have another match. Every win she’d had would be undermined by accusations that she had been cheating and running hot when she got the pin. Alexa doesn't need any extra power to squash Carmella in the ring, that's for damn sure. It’s insulting.
---
Alexa has never been around a living werewolf long enough to understand their habits, but in the month or so since Ocala she has become very attuned to Baron Corbin’s comings and going. According to her clock they have about an hour to wait until he leaves the building, plenty of time. They do a couple of warm-ups to get their cardio going. They argue about the latest X-men movie and whether it was good or not (it was). When time gets a little closer, Blake and Murphy put on the gloves with runes embroidered on the palms - the three of them had each put a drop of blood on the thread that morning, and Alexa makes sure they remember the right way to anchor their feet so they don’t accidentally tear down the building. The last thing Alexa wants to do is have to explain this little situation to Regal.
Corbin is a couple of minutes late. They aren’t at a vantage point where they can see him leave the building, but there is no mistaking the shout of rage when he finds his motorcycle sitting on two flat feet. Alexa planned this whole party on the assumption that Corbin would be able to scent Murphy on the bike, be able to track the smell even during a new moon. She wasn’t wrong. Corbin comes tearing around the corner, furious, too overcome with anger to realize that he’s running headfirst into a trap.
He registers the three of them a hair second too late. Moving in tandem, Blake and Murphy fall into stance and swing their arms in a wide arc to the east, towards the Atlantic. They spin, hands clapping together in front of them before their left hands go to their chests and their right hands push out towards Corbin. Alexa feels the invisible wave of power flow harmlessly around her before it catches Corbin and slams him into the side of the building. There's a wet crack as his head knocks back against the bricks before he crumples to the ground. The Lone Wolf (Alexa rolls her eyes every single time she hears that shit from Graves on commentary) doesn't move for a moment, stunned, but probably not concussed. Probably. Corbin starts trying to struggling to his feet a couple seconds after he goes down, but Blake and Murphy remember what Alexa taught them, keeping their hands palms-out towards Corbin. They had been practicing the move all week, and Alexa will have to congratulate them later for remembering not to high five like they had in the living room.
“Good job, guys.” Alexa smiles at them before getting serious. She rolls her shoulders, cracks her neck as she walks closer to stand over Corbin. “Keep him down.”
If Corbin wasn’t struggling to catch his breath he would probably be growling at her. As it is, he won't be able to rise higher than a crouch, pressed down against the concrete by an invisible hand. Not so intimidating anymore. Just a dumb wolf (aren't they all) who thought that he was nigh invincible, about to learn a harsh lesson. Alexa doesn’t know if he can smell the permanent marker on her or not. If he can, does he even know what it means? Her type are even rarer than his. If he knew what she was about to do to him he would probably be begging her for mercy, and even though he isn’t, yet, Alexa says
“Don’t worry, puppy.”
Corbin manages to draw enough breath for a harsh laugh. It makes her see red, but Alexa just smiles back at him, all teeth. The force that Blake and Murphy are holding him with makes it difficult to get air. Corbin should feel like he’s at the bottom of the ocean, and Alexa thinks she sees the beginnings of realization flicker across Corbin’s face when he tries to look at her, tries to rise up from his hands and knees again and finds that he still can’t.
“I don’t want to kill you.” Alexa says. Then she kicks him in the side, hard.
The steel toes of her boots are chased with silver. (Under the leather, of course. She was serious about not wanting to kill him. She doesn't need that kind of heat coming down on this good new life she has made for herself.) Alexa is practically vibrating - she may be only five feet tall, but she can kick like a mule even when she’s not running hot. Right now, with the lines drawn on her skin glowing bright white and the air around her crackling with power, she would not be surprised if she literally kicks the shit out of Corbin. Which is disgusting, but - as far as she is concerned - fair.
“I don’t want to kill you.” Alexa repeats, and kicks Corbin again. Right in the ribs. He’s fallen back on the ground now, pressed up on his elbows but with his head hung down. If she had to guess, she would say that Corbin was probably digging deep and trying to force a shift. Attempting to save himself. But between the blood on the runes and the new moon, Alexa knows he won’t be able to do more than make his greasy hair sprout a few extra inches.
“I just want you to remember. Once. This. Is. Over. When you’re pissing blood. That you should have kept your dirty. Little. Dog. Hands. To. Yourself.” The message is punctuated with more vicious kicks, the heavy toes of her boots working up and down Corbin's prone form. Alexa focuses on his hip, along his ribs, the soft, unprotected underbelly. She digs her boot into his side at the end of the last kick, holding the barely-shielded silver against where his liver should be, watching him twitch, and Alexa knows that Corbin would be screaming if he were still capable of such an effort.
Alexa’s breathing hard, now, and the flyaway hairs that have escaped her ponytail are sticking to the sweat on her forehead. It’s not exactly sustainable, drawing this type of energy, but she is going to ride it as long as she thinks Blake and Murphy can hold. Longer, maybe. Her blood is up and it makes her cocky and she thinks that now, even without the boys holding him, Corbin wouldn’t be able to get up before she could put him down again.
All of a sudden bright lights flood the alley, blinding them. Fuck. Alexa hadn’t heard sirens, but her first thought is that someone must have noticed them and called the cops. The lights were too bright to see through but she heard one of the doors on the car open and a deep voice yell
“Stop!”
If Alexa would have been thinking straight she would have recognized the voice, but she was riding too high on adrenaline. Everything seemed to slow down. She spun around, turning her back on Corbin, and she felt it when the power that had been holding him down snapped. Blake and Murphy had raised their hands above their heads. Alexa hesitated, then did the same. She knew in the back of her mind that she was damn lucky to have had Corbin mostly out of commission before this unwelcome turn of events. Otherwise the cops might have had front row seats to watch the future Women’s champ get disemboweled.
If everything had slowed down when the lights first pinned them, it speds up again real fast when Alexa heard Corbin groan on ground behind her. Her mind was racing, weighing the options. They could try to run and they might make it, or she could try to disable the cops, but it went against something at the core of her to leave human bystanders in proximity with an injured werewolf. Her scheming mind switched, then. There was enough distance between her and the mouth of the alley that she could probably turn and kick Corbin in the head and knock him out completely before the cops could tackle her but then it would make it even harder to talk her way out of this, especially if she kicked too hard and did end up killing Corbin and, fuck, Blake and Murphy would probably end up going to go down for it too -
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit”
“‘Zo! Check on him?”
Alexa’s train of thought ground to a screeching halt. What? Where the fuck had they come from?
“Cassady?” Murphy sounded just about as confused as Alexa felt. The headlights were still blinding, but her eyes has finally adjusted enough that she saw that it was Enzo Amore brushing past her, going to kneel near Corbin’s prone form.
“What were you doing to him?”
“What the fuck does it look like?” Alexa snarled back. “Don’t get too close to him, you don’t know what he is.”
“Yeah, we do.” That was Cassady again, sounding grave enough that Alexa actually believed him for a second even though it made no sense. How could he know? “How you do-” Cassady broke off.
Alexa didn’t think much of Amore and Cassady in the ring, but she did have to admit that Cassady did a pretty great job at blocking light, looming over her like he was. At first Alexa thought that Cassady was staring at her tits, from the way that he was looking down her jacket. Which, what the fuck, really? She lashed out to push him away but he lashed out, surprisingly fast, and caught her wrist. Cassady wasn’t hurting her - his grip was strong but loose, gentle enough to almost be insulting - but Alexa was still about to sock him in his big stupid mouth when she realized. The zipper on her sweatshirt must have slid down when she was kicking Corbin. Cassady had seen the sigil on her chest, and now he was looking at the lines on her hand. Looking at them like he knew what they meant. Then he wasn’t looking at her at all.
“Zo! We gotta go!”
“Huh? Cass, Corbin is way fucked but I think he’ll be oka-”
“Good, cause we’re rollin’ out. Enzo!” To his credit, Enzo didn’t hesitate again, just jumped up and headed for the car.
“Yeah, get out of here!” Blake chimed in, unbidden, and Alexa knew right away that it had been the wrong thing to say
“What? No way. You’re coming with us.”
“Why don’t you make us, huh?”
“Oh, we will!” Enzo was puffing himself up, getting ready to fight, and god damn it. This whole thing had gone sideways so fast Alexa didn’t even know what to think. “Big Cass! Back me up brother!”
But Cassady hadn’t moved. He was looking down at Alexa again. Eyes cutting to the ink on her skin before looking back at her face. Before he could say whatever was crashing around in his thick head, Alexa snatched her hand away.
“Blake! Murphy! We’re going with them.” She rubbed at her wrist as she walked past them, towards the car, and they followed.
“What?”
“Seriously?”
“Said so, didn’t I?” Alexa wasn’t mean about it, but her tone made it clear that she wasn’t going to get bogged down in a discussion. Cassady was right, they needed to go. The longer they stood around arguing the greater chance they ran of drawing attention. “Get the door for me?”
Blake pulled one of his gloves off in his teeth and opened the passenger side, letting Alexa slide in before the two of them piled into the back. The handle of Cassady’s shitty sedan was more than likely plastic, but she hadn’t wanted to chance it. Alexa needed to get her hands washed off first thing. Second thing, she was going to make these two New Jersey morons explain how the hell they knew so much about what had been going on. Speaking of morons…
“Hey! Get outta my seat! How you doin’?! Cass, tell her to move!” Of all the things for Amore to be whining about. She was surrounded by idiots. Luckily, Cassady seemed to have more sense than Alexa had ever given him credit for, pushing the irate Enzo Amore into the backseat with Blake and Murphy.
Alexa glared out the windshield, tuning out the argument that was ramping up behind her. Corbin was starkly lit by the still-blazing headlights - at some point he had pushed himself up so that he was sitting, back to the wall, head hanging down. Even with the distance Alexa could see that Corbin was breathing hard, could see him grimace as he tried to move. Good. Then Cassady was folding himself into the driver's seat, the engine squealing as he backed up and they sped out of the parking lot.