New Heights

Taylor laughed again, and this time it came out as a delighted giggle at Candy Cane's hint of bravado. She loved it. "Oh, sorry. Candy Cane. It's like... When I started, I was Taylor Sparks. I... Don't like that name anymore. Funny story, I was trying to think of something fast, a name like that, and so I thought, oh! Taylor Swift! And... no. No."

Taylor's eyes went wide in shock. A match with Candy Cane? "No, I couldn't... I mean, it wouldn't be..." She couldn't have a match with her! She couldn't just kick her idol's ass like that! There's no way Candy Cane could hang with Taylor now, as much as it pained her to think of it. But- oh, wait, did she mean...

"Oh, did you mean a match with you? Like a tag team??" She bounced excitedly and shook her fists in front of her chest. "Ohhhhmigod, that would be fucking awesome! Like, we could take on Dixie and Reiko and fuckin' kick their asses so hard they forget all about Rumble Roses.

Candy looked even more pained when Taylor mentioned that she had almost been Taylor Swift, bringing a palm to her face in horror. "If ya had picked that name, I don't think the two of us would be talkin' right now. I would have already gotten the hell out of here." Even thinking about that name was giving Candy crappy flashbacks to really bad mistakes she had made flipping her way through radio stations across the country and walking past preppy clothing stores. "Ugh," she grunted out, shaking her head.

She wasn't really getting Taylor's whole reaction to the match idea thing. Here Candy was trying to be nice, even when she had come here for nothing but beating the AFW girls down, and this was the kind of reaction she was gonna get? She was about a half-second from mouthing off something to that tune before Taylor changed her tune, leaving Candy to wonder if Taylor didn't think that she had been challenging her. Not yet, anyway. As badly as Candy wanted to take on every girl here, even she, in her extreme stubbornness, knew that she didn't get to take on the champion first. After she'd kicked a few other asses, maybe then she'd get her chance.

A wicked grin crossed her face at the mention of taking on Dixie and Reiko. Candy had known for a long time that both of them had been in AFW, and just like with all the other Roses (especially Anesthesia, now), the rocker wanted another chance to take them down. If Taylor wanted that kind of action, Candy was more than happy to please this fan of hers. "Ya know what? That sounds a damn good idea. I think Reiko needs to have her memory jarred, remember that match ya talked about with the Astro Scissors. She's an old woman now, right?" And Candy wondered if Dixie still had those epic tits. Well, unless they were fake, she wasn't sure where they could have gone...

Now, even she was a little pumped up for this, a smug look crossing her face as she stepped towards Taylor and leaned in with her hands on her hips. "So hell yes, we'll make that a thing if you're game and if those two jokers haven't bitched out, 'biggest fan.'"

Taylor leaped up in the air and kicked her heels up behind her, and shook her hips in a quick victory boogie before she resumed trying to be cool.

"Ohhhhmigod, that would be SO. AWESOME!"

But then she paused. She caught sight of Madison Heights and her cameraman, standing around the corner and watching for the next interview, and nauseating reality began to creep back into her belly. Her face fell noticeably, and she sighed.

"Well... The thing is..." She began slowly. "I've got kind of a big match coming up. I'm trying to... Well, it doesn't matter, but it's a handicap match, so I'll be fighting two girls at once, plus Kelly Conway will probably show up to try to take my title. I'm... Ready for it, but things are going to be a little crazy for me for a while. I'm not sure what's going to happen."

She eyebrows were apologetic but the rest of her face was disappointed. "I wish my life could just be this awesome all the time, but I'm the champ, so I've got to handle some business. Ya know?"

Just as soon as a wicked grin crossed Candy's face, thinking about getting to work over the old Roses hotshots (and thinking about how great it would be to follow up that win by kicking Anesthesia's ass), she noticed Taylor's excitement completely poof out of existence. What...the hell? Candy's own face fell when her fan turned back to her, and she went back to eyeing Taylor with suspicion as she tried to figure out what was eating at her. Good thing she didn't have to guess, because she wouldn't have been able to guess that was the problem.

And in her opinion, it was a bullshit problem. She frowned at the idea of anyone having to do a handicap match, much less a champ. "A champ has to fight two people and get crap from a third? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!", she griped. "You're the champ. Shouldn't ya get more respect than that, instead of a bunch of scared bitches gangin' up on ya?" Back in the Roses, stuff like that barely ever happened. At least all the Roses usually had their big girl panties on. They didn't need or want another person to help them out in a match, and Candy had wanted that least of all.

A part of her was tempted to say that she might actually go to the match herself and waylay whoever this "Kelly Conway" bitch was for trying to pull any crap on a match that already wasn't what it should have been for a champ. She sounded like a chick who could use a good, solid shot to the face with a red guitar. But...getting involved in other people's fights wasn't exactly Candy's thing to begin with... and that might make Taylor look as bad as the handicap twins, like a namby-pamby herself. Noticing that her fists had balled up, Candy relaxed her hands and folded her arms under her chest, and she set her jaw, peering at Taylor from the feet up. "Eh... it doesn't matter anyway. If ya take after me at all, you'll wipe the mat with all three of 'em," Candy reassured, her own vendetta forgotten. "I'll be backstage watchin' when it happens. Maybe we'll talk again when it's all over." And maybe I'll teach those bitches what a whammy bar's really for if they pull something, she chose not to add, still frustrated.

Taylor looked away and shrugged helplessly. "I'm the one who made it happen like that. It's complicated, but as for respect... I don't think many people like me being champ."

At least, that's the way it seemed among the other wrestlers. Taylor had fantasized before about taking the title and winning the respect of her fellow wrestlers. She had hoped to be accepted, as a talented fighter, as a fighter among fighters. That didn't really happen.

Somehow, meeting her old idol under these circumstances seemed to make things worse, like there was that much more weight on her shoulders. She wondered how things were for Candy Cane, and if she ever dealt with these things.

"Well, I'm definitely going in there to win. All I really need to do is beat Kelly. No matter what else, I have to beat her. But now, I guess..." She looked back at her fellow punk with uncharacteristic shyness, so foreign on her features that she seemed to become someone else entirely.

"Can... I hug you?"

Candy had one word on her lips when Taylor said that she had made the handicap match happen. Why?, she wanted to say, and opened her mouth to blurt it out. If she had been the same kid that she'd been when she'd started out wrestling, she probably would have asked it. Now, she just slammed her mouth shut again, holding it back. She didn't even know what Taylor meant, and maybe it wasn't something that she needed to go questioning. It was a rebel kind of thing to do, taking on two girls when a third one was bound to show up. Hell, it showed toughness. There wasn't any point in Candy trying to question that.

Still, the whole thing ticked her off. "Yeah, I bet they don't," Candy repeated, sourly, as she thought back on the Roses and how people had thought the same about her, that she didn't deserve to be champion material just because she was viewed as a delinquent and as a punk. Those should have been better reasons to get some respect, because no one was supposed to mess with a true punk. People didn't get the memo then, and they weren't getting it now either, by the sound of it. "Everyone's gotta be an idiot about it...", she added, suddenly having a big need to go find Anesthesia and kick her in the face just to prove her point.

But she got herself calmed down again, listening to what Taylor was saying about beating that Conway chick. It sounded like Candy needed to meet whoever the hell she was, if only to sneer in her face for having the stupidity to cross someone who was following in her footsteps. The redhead barely noticed it, but she was already feeling protective. "I got a guitar made just for some loser's face."

What the blonde said next, though, jarred her so far from her anger that she could have fallen over backwards. She stared, her face a mix of responses to Taylor's question. A...hug? Punks didn't hug. That was just part of the unwritten punk rules. Fists bumps were a thing. Hell, punches were a thing sometimes. Not hugs. And Candy could tell that even asking had Taylor acting all different, not like someone who called Candy their idol.

And yet, Candy felt like she was going to beat her head on the side of her locker if she didn't take Taylor up on it. The girl had just spilled a whole load of crap to her that she could level with...and once upon a time, she hadn't been too far from asking someone for a hug. "Agh...well..." Candy's rare loss for words gave her enough time to bring a hand to the back of her head to run across a pigtail and glance around, making sure no one was watching. If they were, she'd have to tell them to piss off. The only people around were all the way down the hall, not paying the two women any mind. Figuring the coast was clear, Candy pulled her lower lip between her teeth and turned back to Candy. "Go for it...," she agreed, awkwardly, as she scooted just far enough forward to give Taylor a chance to hug her.

Taylor didn't hesitate. She just held her breath and went for it, wrapping her arms around Candy in a tight hug. She closed her eyes and let the surreal moment imprint itself in her soul. She let go too soon, but she'd never forget it.

She blinked several times and found that she was tearing up, but she wasn't crying. With an embarrassed smile, she wiped at her eyes and glanced around. She was already bursting to tell everyone that she had finally met the Candy Cane, the idol of her teenage years. She should even call Dixie, just because. Talking to her, even being friendly, finally hugging her, made her feel a little bit more like a champion, and less like an outsider trying to keep up with the real wrestlers.

"Well..." She said, unsure what to say. "Cool. Um... How about when I win this next match, we go for drinks afterward?" She asked hopefully, trying to play it cool. "But I gotta run for now. Lots to do, 'n junk. Really, really good to meet you."

She paused, and then waved. "Bye!"

She hurried out of the locker room to escape her embarrassment, and as she left, Madison Heights turned to her camera man and discreetly whispered "Tell me you got all that."

Candy accepted the hug like she was about to shatter into a million pieces from embarrassment herself, standing rigid like a manikin with her lips pursed. It wasn't much of a hug, to be honest, if just one person was doing the whole damn hugging part, she guessed... Though she had to mentally smack herself to do it, she brought hands flexing at the ends of stiff arms up to lightly rest on Taylor's back, first finding a really awkward area above the other punk's ass to rest before Candy again went rigid and shot them up near to her shoulders, peering around for people who might have caught that obvious case of social awkwardness. But she did still feel...pretty good about giving it, in spite of looking like it was the most painful thing in the world to have to go through. She couldn't even remember the last time she had even...thrown an arm around someone, outside of fans for pictures or something else that wasn't personal and just a punk star being a punk star. It was...weird.

And seeing Taylor having to wipe at her eyes after only made it weirder...and she guessed...better in a way, too. Damn, she probably looked awkward standing there now that she had finally done it. Chewing on her lip likely hard enough to draw blood, she brought a hand up to the back of her neck and scratched there, for lack of anything else to do, like she didn't have a brain in her head.

Thankfully, Taylor broke the silence. "Yeah...", she responded, as hesitantly as her fan. "Kick their asses, and...er...I'll buy all the drinks." That seemed like...a good thing to offer, after all this sappy talk. Maybe. And it kind of helped her save face again. It worked. Thankfully, she didn't have to try and come up with anything else, since Taylor was getting ready to scurry off and...make other things awkward elsewhere, maybe. "Sure, go get ready to beat 'em down, or whatever it is you're gonna do. I'll see ya when ya earn those drinks or somethin'."

And then, she was gone. Candy stood pat for a few seconds, rolling her feet for several seconds and scratching at her stomach, part of her trying to analyze what had just happened and part of her just wanting to get back to hitting something. She landed on something in between, stepping back over to her locker and snatching up a box of taffy that she stuffed under her arm as she marched out of the locker room.

"Biggest fan..."