New Heights

"Taylor Parker! Good to see you, good to see you. This is exciting!"

The yellow-clad J-popstar interviewer preened and fussed and tousled her green hair and straightened her cropped jacket, microphone in hand. She nodded to her camera man and bounced in place, humming to herself while he gave her a countdown.

Madison Heights:

"Hey guys! I'm Madison Heights, and this..." She turned to Taylor, "Is Taylor Parker. Taylor, it's super cool to get to talk to you, how are you?"

She held the microphone down to Taylor, who sat on a bench with her elbows on her knees, sweat streaking down her skin and beading off the tip of her nose. Madison was sunny and peppy and smiling away, but Taylor was focused.

"I'm good, man. How are you?" Her deep blue eyes gleamed up at Madison.

"I'm great, Taylor, thanks for asking! Now let's get right to it, Taylor, you recently defeated Angel at Avalanche last year and took home the Friction World Title. Definitely the highlight of your career, a very big moment for you, but... your night didn't end with the bell. What went through your mind when you saw Kelly Conway coming down to the ring with a contract that entitled her to a shot at your new belt?"

Taylor drew a deliberate breath before she answered. "Well... Pretty much what you'd think. By the time I pinned Angel I couldn't see straight. I could barely stand, so... ya know. It sucked."

"Were you afraid that maybe this was the end already, just moments after claiming the belt?"

No matter how many times Taylor was asked that question... "Yes."

"But luckily for all of us, Kelly never got to cash in her contract. Your friend and training partner Avery Shields stopped Kelly before she could make the match official. Was this planned? Did Avery agree to have your back?"

Taylor didn't much like the implications, but she kept her composure. She shook her head. "No, dude. I just met her right before my match. I bumped into her backstage, we talked for a second, that was it. I didn't ask her to do that. I didn't want her to do that. Because now..."

"Because of what has now happened to Avery." Madison finished the sentence, but not the way Taylor would have. She was thinking more about how she felt as an illegitimate champ, and less about Avery's injury. The guilt hit her like a punch in the stomach.

"Yeah," she nodded.

"So, recently Avery was assaulted backstage, and received a terrible injury that could keep her out of competition for the foreseeable future, possibly even end her career."

"Yeah. Is that a question? Or..."

"Do you know who is responsible for the attack? Have you talked to Avery since the incident."

"Yeah, of course, man. Avery's... she's doing alright, but she's home now. I... she's... Jessica Wright did it. Kelly's behind it, and that means Brittany Luvve and Death Bunny are in it too. Avery's awesome, man, she's super talented and tough, and this..."

"Was this motivation for you when you challenged Brittany and Death Bunny to a handicap tag match? And do you think it's a good idea to face not one buy two notorious wrestlers at the same time, especially when Kelly can challenge for your title at any time?"

Taylor took another deep breath and sat back against the lockers. She pushed back her sweat-damp pigtails and scanned the locker room while she mustered the energy to compose a response.

"I think it's a great idea. Kelly won't fight me unless I'm in a bad spot, so I'll give her a bad spot. If she doesn't cash in that contract and fight me after this match, she should just retire and take the next flight home. She's a coward. She's a spineless thug and she can't wrestle for shit. She talks, and talks, and talks, but now with everything she's done... I'm gonna fight her, and she's not gonna like it. I don't care how it happens, I just need her in the ring with me..."

"I admire your confidence, Taylor. And of course, as the champ, you have every right to be confident, but do you think that-"

Madison kept talking, but Taylor's attention wandered away. She caught sight of someone on the other end of the locker room, a flash of red pigtails on a tall, thin girl. She leaned over to get a better look.

"-a responsibility to the fans, but what would it mean for your career if you were known as the shortest lived champion in AFW history?"

Taylor looked back at Madison, who was still all smiles despite her loaded question. She gave her a polite smile and stood up. "Hey, sorry. Good talking to you and stuff, but I gotta run." She abruptly excused herself, leaving Madison behind to cover as well as she could, and strolled off to the other end of the locker room, and peered around the corner where the red pigtails went.

"Hey, what's up?"

...

Taylor's eyes got bigger and bigger. When Candy Cane finally turned to face her, her face lit up like the sun after a storm.

"Oh... my... GAWD!" Her voice cracked. She stepped around the corner with a spastic flailing of her hands. "YOU'RE... YOU'RE..."

Taylor was overwhelmed by fandom and let out a high, girlish scream. She bounced up and down and clutched her hands against her chest. "You're... Are you... I mean..." Get a grip, Taylor.

"You're CANDY CANE!"

The response that Candy received, which was a lot louder and more frantic than what she had been expecting, left her frozen in place, an eyebrow arched in the...uh, flailing, screaming woman's direction. The redhead did not budge as the outburst ran its course, save for her features contorting more into confusion.

Finally, it came to the end, as the woman yelled out the obvious. "Uhhh..." Yeah, she was Candy Cane, alright. So...what? The obvious answer was that she was dealing with a fan here, but she hadn't exactly expected the other wrestlers to go ga-ga over her or anything. Candy wasn't here for that, just to mow her way through the roster and prove her point, even if that goal was...on hold for a while. So what was going on here?

"Unless you're a really big fan, what you just did? Kind of...terrifying." Actually, even if she was a fan, it was still kind of terrifying. Candy was used to big groups of fans doing all that screaming, not a single girl who walked up to her in a quiet locker room, even though that girl diiid look a lot like a punk rock fan, now that Candy could get a good, long look at her. And why did she look familiar? It wasn't because of the whole punk rock vibe she had going, but because...Candy could have sworn she had seen a hell of a lot of pictures of this chick, somewhere. Remembering faces wasn't her thing, but the notion was still there.

"What?"

Taylor scrunched up her brow. Terrifying?

"No no, it's cool. Um..." She held up her hands, palms out, to assure Candy Cane that she wasn't at all terrifying. "My name's Taylor Parker, I'm a wrestler here. Because..." She gestured at Candy. "Because of you."

She took a breath and glanced around. She knew people would make a thing out of it if they saw the hard-nosed punk, the Friction champion, starstruck and spazzing like a tween-ager meeting Justin Bieber. Luckily, it looked like she was in the clear.

"I mean, like... Okay, I'd never say this to anyone else, but I am literally your biggest fan. You're the reason I got into wrestling!"

Candy continued to frown indifferently and keep her eyebrow raised at the woman as she explained that she was not actually terrifying and was just...here because of...Candy. The redhead thouuuught she got what the woman, Taylor Parker she said, was trying to explain, even if she was going at it in the most backwards way since one of Candy's bandmates had tried to write a punk song about kittens. And Candy didn't think she was terrifying, necessarily, because no one as tough as Candy found anyone terrifying, but the comment had done the trick to get the woman back to the point. That she was a big damn fan. Candy could handle that, even if a huge fan among the wrestlers...kind of put a kink in her whole "making no friends and kicking everyone's ass" plan.

When Taylor finished, Candy flashed an incredulous look. "Huh? Ya started wrestling because of me?" A grown woman had started wrestling solely because of Candy? For a moment, that didn't seem to make any sense, because anyone who followed Candy when she had been eighteen years old and in Rumble Roses would have had to have been barely more than a kid, but then she remembered...that was ten years ago and a whooooole lot of hit singles ago. Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was twenty-eight frickin' years old now instead of eighteen and barely old enough to enter the Rumble Roses tournament. She sure as hell wasn't ever going to feel old or act old until she was really old as hell, but it was times like these when Candy was forced to remember that she was closer to thirty than to twenty now... She scrunched her lips lightly at the thought, but she quickly straightened out her features to make damn sure her big fan here didn't notice, instead narrowing her eyes again and jabbing an observant finger towards the other wrestler.

Something about her name got Candy's recollection going again. "So... you said your name was... Parker?", Candy asked, though she had heard the woman loud and clear. Parker...Parker... "Wait a minute..."

The redhead knit her eyebrows and took a step back, bringing her hands up to form a picture frame with her fingers around Taylor's upper body. Squeezing one eye shut and pooching her lips, she started studying Taylor again. Something was missing though...something like...

A title belt?

That was it. The redhead dropped her hands, the revelation evident on her features. "Now I know where I saw ya! Pictures with a title belt... You're Friction champion."

Taylor quickly blushed a shade of red that somehow highlighted the faint freckles across her cheeks. She bashfully averted her eyes and tried to downplay it.

"Well, yeah... That's me. It's pretty cool, I guess..." She looked down at the floor for a moment. She left out the part about being the fake champ, and how Kelly should've had the belt, and how the pressure of holding the belt while knowing that she would never really be champ until she beat Kelly Conway was driving her absolutely crazy.

"But... I've wanted to meet you since I was in high school!" She went right back to gushing. "I used to watch just to see you, ya know? Like, do you remember when Reiko went for the Angel Dive on you, and you rolled out of the way and she hit and popped back up, and you hit the Astro Scissors on her before she fell back down?" Taylor said, excitedly pantomiming the scene with her hands. "I was in my bedroom like ohhhhhhhh shit! Or like, I remember when Aisha was all running her mouth and shit and you showed up and hit her in the mouth with your guitar!" She gave a nervous laugh and kept on going. "Actually, cool story, I actually got beaten down by a girl with a guitar earlier on, and like, I guess it sucked because I was in the hospital and had a bad concussion and shit, but it made me think of you and it was like... that's pretty cool, in a way, because like... I dunno. I can do all of your moves, though! The scissors and the School Driver, I can pull both of them off and stuff, but I've never used them in the ring because, like, those are for you, ya know?"

She realized she was talking a lot. But she had so much to say!

"Ha!", Candy chimed, when Taylor told her that she really was the champ. Now she could get in on all this enthusiasm. "My biggest fan is the champion in the biggest promotion still standin'. And my teachers always tried to tell me I was nothin' but a bad influence." Her arms crossed under chest, the redhead looking as smug as possible. It was pretty darn obvious that if Taylor was her biggest fan, and she wasn't gonna doubt someone who had run up to her and had such a fit about it, then Candy had inspired someone to become a champion. That meant that she, Candy Cane, had the stuff of a champion. Yep.

Taylor went at it again with the fangirling, but now that Candy knew what the hell she was talking about, it wasn't a a sensory overload like before. That didn't stop Candy from being surprised, again, as Taylor started rattling off things that had happened in some of Candy's Roses matches almost better than Candy could have. She could kinda remember the thing with Reiko, because that match had taken a heck of a lot out of her and landing that Astro Scissors hadn't been the easiest thing in the world... Her face did light up when Taylor reminded her of clocking Aisha right on that stupid, no-singing face of hers with an real musical instrument, too. The redhead had heard Aisha was around here somewhere...maybe she needed another guitar to the teeth.

"You remember some of that stuff better than I do...", she admitted, mellowed by the thought of knocking Aisha out. "So you're sayin'... ya watched Rumble Roses mostly because of me, and that's what got ya to come here in the first place? That's...crazy." Crazy in a...good way, Candy thought. Back then, Candy thought she had only made it by being the one playing it dirty, with things like the guitar to Aisha's face and hiding cheap shots from the refs and forcing the nice girls to show all their asses to the crowd, and that all the fans didn't like her for it. She'd been cool with that, because it was a way to keep people from knowing that she was too mushy and taking advantage of it... but hearing that someone had been a fan of all that stuff and could retell parts of Candy's matches like they had happened yesterday? Candy thought that was...really nice.

Her expression fell slightly again when Taylor mentioned she'd been put in the hospital with a concussion by a guitar, which she wasn't exactly sure counted as a "cool story" but, uh, she would take the chick's word for it. And about the moves...it wasn't like Candy had a patent on them, or anything. She'd just come up with them at the old gym back home when she'd found out about Rumble Roses and the whole load of crap happening with her orphanage. If Taylor thought they were so great... "Weeeeell, they're just moves. It's not like I'm the only person who can use 'em."

Erm...why was she being nice, here? If she was going to take out every girl in Friction, which was starting to sound like a bigger and bigger task every week, that meant she was going through Taylor, too. And if she did make it through every girl, they were probably gonna have to give her the title belt just by default. The thought made her cringe a little, but she held it in for the time being.

"It is crazy!" Taylor nodded enthusiastically. "Like... I got beat up a lot growing up, because... Well, I guess my big mouth is pretty famous. I've really reined it in a lot in the last few years, but in school, it was a big problem. It was a pretty bad school, and I'd always come home all busted up. My mom would get so pissed!" She tried to laugh, but that part especially really wasn't funny.

"And then I turned on the TV one day and there you were! You looked like me, just older and stuff, and you were in a punk band, and you were kicking ass! It, like, blew my mind, ya know? You were just like Candy from the block, ya know? And I thought... Maybe I could do that too, then no one would fuck with me."

She took a breath and wiped her sweaty palms on her flame red workout shorts. "I played in a few punk bands, too. Guitar. I sucked." She laughed. "Man, though, it's so super cool to meet you, dude. Er, Candy. Rebecca. This is literally a dream come true for me. I don't want to sound weird but... Like, you were my hero! I even had red hair and pigtails like you for a match or two, but blue was more my color."

Candy peered into Taylor's features as the latter explained what all had happened to her back in school, and trying to hold on to the whole idea that Taylor was just another chick to take out on her way back to respect wasn't really...working. The story that Taylor was telling...kind of sounded like what could have happened to Candy. Even though she was a pint-sized punk too, saying what she wanted to who she wanted, all the ladies at the orphanage and the teachers like Miss Spencer made sure that Candy was "protected" from all the kickback because they said she had "potential." Candy had always hated it, because she knew that they were only watching out for her because they felt sorry for her having no parents, but it had probably saved her the trouble of having to really get into any fights that she didn't start. It sounded like Taylor didn't have that, uh, luxury.

The redhead evasively curled her mouth, not exactly sure what to say. She guessed she had never really...shown anyone anything back in Rumble Roses, or helped anyone. She was supposed to be there to help herself, she had told everyone, even though that really meant helping the orphanage. Hearing that someone had become a wrestler and a champion just because Candy had walked into a ring with a short skirt, red pigtails, and a guitar was...not what she expected to hear after eight years of wading through fans who just listened to her music and maybe tried to jam out to it in their garage with a few friends. It...kind of made her feel good.

She only broke from the thought when Taylor called her by her kiddie name, and her sheepish look shifted into a noticeable cringe. "Erm, not...Rebecca. I can take anything but Rebecca," she briefly corrected, bringing her fingers up to her forehead to wipe away images of being dressed up more modestly than a nun at the orphanage while hearing "oh Rebecca!" day in and day out.

Even that did not detract from the kind of warm feeling she got from Taylor explaining everything to her. She couldn't help but think back to the Roses, when she'd been...a little jealous of the way Makoto and Aigle inspired each other and made a friendship out of it. Here was a woman who wouldn't even be wrestling or have a title belt if Candy hadn't inspired her. So much for that whole deal of just thinking of every girl here as a target... Ever since The Killer Bambies had broken up, Candy had been keen on the whole loner thing. She wasn't going to get all sappy, but...

"Yeah, no one should mess with the red pigtails. Only one chick around here can pull 'em off," she said with a cheeky grin and a finger wound into a strand of hair, trying to keep her edge but likely failing. Oh well. No one was around to hear all this, right? Her eyes avoided Taylor's, as she glanced over the champ's shoulder. "Ya know... If I'm such a big deal to ya, maybe we could get together for a match sometime, or somethin'." She glanced at the top of Taylor's head. "Maybe bring out the blue hair, I'll keep my red, and we can show a couple prudes out here what it means to mess with a couple a' punks."