Change for the Glamorous [for Daaharu]

Spoiler:

"Hi hi, everyone."

A bikini-clad Johanna Vogel, brim of her hat tilted high on her forehead to keep her face visible, held her phone away from her and offered it a casual wave. "Do I ever have a treat coming your way." With the most confident of raised eyebrows, Johanna tilted her phone down slightly, giving it barely a glimpse of her cleavage in the meager yellow swimsuit before she tilted it back up to her face and gave it a chastising look. "I know you're eager, but you're going to have to wait. AFW was smart enough to book me for a big introductory photoshoot before I get into my first match, so there will be this - and much more where that came from. Be on the lookout, because I know you can't wait to see the photos. And remember - I'm still taking the highest bid on requests for my next clip. See you soon." With another intent-filled raised eyebrow, Johanna turned the camera off and lowered the phone until she could shield it from the blistering sun, to watch it over again before she submitted it to social media.

Once that was done, the very pleased German stuffed the phone into the bag beside her again and gave a pleased, fanged smile and an eager rub of her hands to the length of beach that lay before her. A few more minutes and her first bit of appreciation as AFW's newest star would be underway.

She had dropped many a hint to the company, after her highly successful tryout, that they should give her a proper introduction to the fans. That they had chosen a photoshoot to plaster all over the internet was perfectly fine with her; that was exposure that she couldn't have gotten back at her old promotion. Yet she had still gained a following by showing her face and her gifts to every single person with the good sense to pay attention. Here, it would be much easier - the company would do half of the work for her, and to supplement her pay for matches, she would figure out ways to handle the rest.

Already equal to the challenge of attracting attention, Johanna spent her few waiting minutes stretching, jogging, and generally getting the attention of any passersby paying attention to the finer things in life before a fairly fine vehicle pulled into a nearby parking lot. Pleased, Johanna watched a small crew with some lighting and camera equipment pour out, spearheaded by a woman completely overdressed for the situation. Of more interest to Johanna was the person in the back holding more swimsuits, though - she needed to refresh her stock of them...

The German gymnast slipped her way towards that particular individual as they all walked up, trying to finger at some of the swimsuits. "Miss Vogel. We will get the equipment ready and start the shoot as soon as the other subject arrives."

Johanna nearly tore a red side-tie bottom off of its hangar, turning with a dark, confused look to the photographer. "Maybe I didn't hear that right... The... other subject?"

Spoiler:

The last time Maddie was on this beach, she had been slamming her butt into her friend Sachiko with enough velocity to shatter the hips of a lesser woman. It hadn't been a planned match and there were no cameras there, but evidently word had gotten back to AFW management about Maddie's bangin' beach bod, because now they had asked her back to the beach for an exclusive photoshoot that was going to go up on the front page of AFW's website, available for sale next to PPV clips and tickets to live AFW events. It was a big deal, for a wrestler as new as Maddie to be getting such exposure, and she relished it.

And this time, though she was on the beach where so many eyes had been turned to her and Sachiko during their booty (and other stuff) battle, now she was all alone, with all eyes on her, and her only! She had to admit, it was a little funny not to have a girl to totally own in some sort of contest out here with her...but, really, getting an exclusive photoshoot as a virtual rookie was pretty much a victory in the competition of public relations, wasn't it? Maddie was still giddy as she bounded down the beach, with a cute, tall camera girl in tow, aiming a video camera at Maddie for what the Californian assumed was behind-the-scenes footage. Wearing her tiny blue bikini and her pink skull baseball cap, Maddie would make sure to show off for the camera, letting her boobs bounce a bit as she skipped across the sand, then bending down to pick up a shell, incidently—but obviously intentionally!—showing off her ass in the process.

When she straightened back up, she would make a bee line towards the rest of the camera crew just a couple hundred yards down-beach. There was a whole rack of swimsuits there, and Maddie was eager to get her hands on them and try some of them on. She bounded a little more eagerly forward, singing a little bit as she did: "I'm on top top, top top...never gonna stop stop, stop stop...the girls like me a lot lot...because I am so hot hot, yeah..."

Maddie giggled as she got to the rack of bikinis, sliding her hand along a nice hot pink thong as her photographer caught the eye of a producer. That woman took a couple of steps toward them and nodded. "Good, now that we have both of them here, we can get started."

Maddie almost didn't notice what she said, as she was busy looking at the swimsuits, but something struck her ear wrong. "What? Both?"

And at the same time, from the other side of the bikini rack, she heard a girl with an...intriguing accent demanding to know about the "other subject." That was...odd. Maddie wrinkled her nose in thought for a second, then pushed the bikinis so that she could see through to the other side, where a girl in a yellow bikini and a blue baseball cap looked like she was about to rip a poor photographer's head off. "Hey. What's with the, uh, 'other subject' thing? This is just supposed to be my photoshoot."

The incredulous, not-slightly-intimidating stare that the German directed at the speaker wandered to the others in the expectation that an explanation would come. When they all swiveled their heads to one another before they finally settled on the overdressed figure closest to Johanna, her green eyes slid to her, too, but the woman's attention had wandered elsewhere - enough by itself to offend Hanna. Pursing her lips, she shifted and stepped backward, trying to put herself between the woman and whatever else had caught her eye to remind her who had been promised a time to shine like she deserved.

But the words that left the woman's mouth as she spoke to someone Hanna couldn't see until she got on her tip-toes - another photographer - told her that the promise apparently hadn't meant much of anything.

"Oh mein Gott. Exc-"

Hanna made it halfway through the word and halfway raised her finger to correct the situation, before a shift in the clothing and a face poking through way too close to her chest for her to just stand there without reacting compelled her to stop and take a step back. She found herself...staring at a face, and the growing irritation on her face slowly grew into a menacing scoff as she took in not only the words coming from that face but realized it was a bit too pretty for her taste - the taste of a woman whose territory, her photoshoot, was coming into threat!

"I think you'll find that this is supposed to be my photoshoot," Hanna bit back, turning to face the girl with both hands on her wide hips. "Yours must be somewhere down the beach. Sorry to see you got lost." Except she wasn't.

When Maddie poked her head through the bikini rack, she couldn't help but automatically scan the body of this German girl, just for a second, eyes running up and down that buxom frame. The girl's fashion sense was actually pretty close to Maddie's own, which was interesting. Skimpy, well-fitting, bright-colored bikini and a baseball cap—in the case of the European, yellow and blue respectively, and in Maddie's case, blue and pink. She sounded like more of a tight-ass than Maddie, though, the way she snapped at the Californian like that, though maybe she wasn't a total bitch, since she did say the thing about being sorry. Right now Maddie was more concerned with what kind of administrative mix-up the photoshoot staff had made than a confrontation with this girl.

"I mean, like, this is where my photoshoot's supposed to be, and these bikinis are, like, all my size, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place," Maddie would reply, before pulling her head back out of the forest of swimwear. She would quickly walk around the rack, though, mirroring the other girl's body language with her hands on her hips, though she would have a smile on her face as she stopped a couple of feet from the German brunette. "I, like, totally love having a partner for a photoshoot, so it's no biggie for me, really! It's just weird, since they told me this was just going to be me, by myself. Seems weird that they would add another girl in right before and not tell me."

She had been kind of looking forward to a big superstar shoot, so maybe she was a little snippy, a little passive-aggressive, even. But Maddie didn't mind hanging out with other sexy girls, especially when there was a chance to compete with and defeat them. And judging by the fact that the woman in the suit wasn't bothering to correct any misunderstandings, Maddie figured that this was just one of those funny times AFW pulled a prank on its employees. She smiled a little wider and stuck out her hand to the German girl to offer a shake. "I'm Maddie."

...That sounded almost like an insult to the easily-infringed-upon German.

Increasingly sour, Hanna nearly pointed out that clearly such skin-exposing, frame-hugging bikinis would be meant solely for someone with her own curves and finely crafted gymnast's physique and no one else, and that just because they were this stranger's size didn't mean she could work them. But... sensing a chance to display her diplomatic skills and composure to the few here with at least a touch of sway on AFW marketing, Johanna bit back any snippy comments and sucked in a focusing breath. "I don't nee..." The finger she lifted, she realized, pointed at nothing but the bikinis with the other woman disappearing.

Hanna pursed her lips, breathing in for composure again, and waited for the woman to appear around the end of the rack. Was fur ein arger...

When she did, Hanna's always-comparing eyes slid over her offeder's bikini-clad frame. A tongue ran across her teeth in annoyance when she found it...not so unimpressive as she would have imagined. Not as fantastic as Hanna's own, but she had to strongly resist a desire to get a closer look, pridefully glancing away from the approaching figure and back towards the bikinis as she shifted her hands from her hips to cross her arms over her nearly-bare chest defensively. Much as the uninvited guest tried to find some point of understanding and agreement between them, Hanna was not so willing to give up this fine opportunity to have someone else in her photos. She should have been the star here.

"Very weird," Hanna "agreed," managing to avoid sounding as territorial as she felt. "Are you sure you didn't mark it wrong on your..." She paused a half-second, trying to make sure she was using the right word - English and its stolen German words. "...calendar? You're probably here on the wrong day." With that comment, she flashed a knowing look at the woman in the suit. She got...nothing but a thin, unreadable smile back. She scrunched her nose slightly, before firing her gaze back to...

Maddie. Hanna offered the hand a suspicious look. A part of her told her that taking the hand would admit agreement...or defeat, even, in this scenario. But as her gaze again slid over Maddie's athletic figure and up to her features...she relented and clasped it a bit too aggressively with hers. "Johanna Vogel." She didn't add that Maddie had best remember it.

"Well..." Finally, the woman of influence spoke, and already Johanna didn't like her tone. "...since you're both here anyway, and there seems to have been a... miscommunication... why don't we have ourselves a fun... tense duo shoot?"

Ahhh. How very convenient. Hanna's eyes narrowed. "Why don't we have my shoot like was promised, and then hers after? I wasn't promised I would have to fight and claw for a solo photoshoot promised by administration... That is in poor taste."

Maddie did like to find common ground with her opponents when she could. She was the sort of girl who preferred to have positive, albeit hyper-competitive, relationships with everyone she met, though every so often it just didn't happen, for whatever reason. Maddie was pretty sure that she was always super nice to the girls she met, but some of them just got kind of bratty and, once they had pushed her enough, she was not going to keep smiling and laughing while they were slinging insults in her face. The look on this German girl's face definitely made Maddie think that this was going to be one of those times, where she was going to have to give up on being friends and focus her energy on kicking some bitch's ass.

But Johanna surprised her. The German girl's tone softened, as she agreed with Maddie that it was weird that such confusion could have occurred in a company which normally ran such a slick operation. Then again, they scheduled dozens of photoshoots, in groups or for individual performers, every month, and mistakes could happen...though it wasn't necessarily a staffer's mistake. "I'm a hundred percent sure, yeah...I don't really make mistakes on things like that," she would say, her tone suggesting that she almost wished she was wrong. "You don't think that, like, you could have it wrong...Johanna?"

Maddie's offer of a handshake was accepted, and she felt the girl in the yellow bikini grab her hand and squeeze it pretty hard. Maddie, of course, just had to squeeze Johanna's hand hard back, pumping it up and down hard, trying to pull Johanna's hand around a bit to show off her strength. While the German was looking at her hand, Maddie's eyes scanned down the German's body. It was, Maddie had to admit, pretty darn impressive! Plenty of muscle, it looked like, and some curves, too, though she clearly wasn't as curvy or as strong as Maddie was.

And now word came down from the woman in charge that, since they were both here, they might as well have a "tense duo shoot." Johanna clearly didn't like that. Maddie didn't either, not exactly, though she hadn't planned on trying to throw Johanna under the bus the way Johanna did to her. "I mean, I kind of have plans, so maybe, like, we could do my photoshoot at my original time and you can hang out 'til after that?" she would counter. Then, though, she would turn towards the suited woman, standing shoulder to shoulder with Johanna, as if they were on the same team against the unfair management. "If we were gonna do a duo shoot, though, it totally wouldn't be a tense one!" She slung her arm around Johanna's shoulders, giving her a bit of a squeeze from the side. "We're totally buddies now. Right, Jojo?"

Johanna's nose scrunched up as quickly as the words shot from her mouth. "Of course not. I have had this planned since I set foot in Japan," she bit back, affronted once more that this rambly-mouthed American could dare insinuate that Johanna would be foolish enough as to not know when her own photoshoot was. Her eyebrows knit, and she regarded the other woman with a scrutiny, but she hid what she wanted to say - that surely, of the two of them, she was the less likely to be clueless.

She didn't say any of it since the German still tried to be civil in front of people who could secure her more photoshoots in the future - but that desire to impress was slowly slipping with each passing moment and Johanna's growing suspicion that this had all been planned. And... with Maddie's apparently challenging grasp on her hand. As she felt the other woman clasp down, Johanna's face darkened in irritation,  but she didn't acknowledge it or so much as look Maddie in the eye. Her own hand only tensed to resist before they unclasped, the German refusing to acknowledge she noticed anything. Besides, clearly, her grip had been tighter than the American's.

But as their... "negotiations" continued, Johanna found herself wanting to grip something else entirely - any part of Maddie's body that would get her to back down. She gave a soured look to the woman, but quickly shot back to the suited figure, straightening her shoulders in pride. "If you have other plans, maybe the shoot isn't so important to you. I think you could... afford to delay it." She offered a smirk and knowing tilt of her head to the crew as if she had won the debate-

Her gentle frown returned the moment she felt Maddie's nearly-naked body press up against hers and the woman grasp her shoulders. And not a word that left the American's mouth matched anything that Johanna was feeling about the situation. At this point, she was almost ready to wrestle Maddie for the shoot. "That is Johanna," she distractedly corrected, overly enunciating in her best American accent, before giving the suited woman a square look. "I don't know, do I get to put her in a toehold if it's tense?", she asked, with a knowing grin.

She would very much like to do that.

Well, Maddie tried her absolute hardest to be nice, but Johanna was making it really tough. The girl was pretty aggressive in the handshake—though the American's grip was clearly the stronger of the two, as she squeezed her German counterpart's hand hard and pumped it multiple times to assert her dominance. Johanna kept on running her mouth, of course, and Maddie, as patient and saintly as she was, was going to get more than a little flustered if this went on for much longer.

"I don't, y'know, have 'other plans.' My plans are for after my photoshoot, which I was kinda, like, expecting would take place on time. And it's time right now," Maddie would explain, as she smirked back at the German. It was pretty obvious what the management, including this woman in the suit, had done to put the two of them in this situation, and if Johanna was still angling for a solo shoot, well, that was kind of dense of her. Maddie was willing to do a duo shoot and even willing to be buddies, but clearly the European brunette was gonna be a bit of a crab about it, so if she wanted to change management's plans then she was the one who was going to have to budge. Not Maddie.

She didn't want to be on the same team. She even seemed to want to have a tense photoshoot. Oooooof course. Maddie knew she'd meet some stubborn bitches at some point... "I mean, we'd be doing holds as buddies, too, Jojo. But if you get a toehold, then I want to put you in a ceiling hold," Maddie would muse, her own grin just as wide as her counterpart's. "Oh, and headscissors, too. Give you a front row seat to see the bun show." Maddie would swing her hips a bit, wiggling her ass in the direction of the nearest camera, showing her rear end off a bit, partially to make herself look good, partially to intimidate Johanna—whom she didn't have any qualms about calling Jojo, in spite of Johanna's warning.

Hanna's German lilt became flatter with each retort to the woman trying to ride her coattails into this shoot, and her green eyes regarded her at her continued words with as much a dismissive glance as one would a dog suddenly barking in the far distance. "I'm so very sorry you have the wrong time," Johanna "apologized," with nicht ein iota of genuineness in her sorry. Immediately, she regretted even giving her that. If she pretended that she did not even exist, perhaps that would do the trick to get Hanna past the obstacle and onto her shoot. "Where would you like to set up for my shoot?", she directed at the suited woman, feigning genuine interest in the answer.

Still Maddie persisted. A gnat, this one. With her patience having already waned, Hanna's sweet smile of curiosity departed. The American was deaf, had she not heard what she should properly call the German, and she certainly seemed to think highly of herself. It was painfully evident, even as Hanna refused to look over at her again, that she did not realize that she spoke to an undefeated wrestler.

As if a glitzy Yankee could ever dare hope to lock her in so much as one hold, much less the two Maddie seemed to think she could apply.

Finally, at the mention of a "bun show," the unimpressed German, pained by the cheese of the threat, gave Maddie another glance - in time to see her shoving her rear in front of a camera. Johanna gave it no more than a passing look before she slid her figure in front of that camera and slapped a hand onto her own hip, shaking her head at the production head. "I do not doubt that the below average are very impressed. But reasonably - you couldn't hope to so much as wrestle me to the ground. I-"

The woman approached them again. Again, Hanna felt she knew what would come from her mouth - and that it had been schemed. "Ladies, ladies! So much talk. To be honest, if we're at an impasse... it's been quite a while since we did an action shoot..."

Johanna seemed to be getting meaner by the second. Maddie had been able to see that most of that sweetness was meant to be deceptive from the very beginning, but she had been holding out hope that her considerable natural charms would have been able to woo the German into a more friendly mode given enough time. Maddie offered a friendly double photoshoot, and Johanna rejected it. She tried to show the girl that they both had been duped by the woman in the suit (and, presumably, other women in other suits back on the AFW campus) and had tried to get the brunette to feel at least some sense of camaraderie in their predicament.

But, nope. Johanna just kept getting meaner, no longer even pretending to care about her public image as she just made herself look like a gigantic brat in response to the management machinations and Maddie's earnest efforts at accommodation. So Maddie was going to have to do this the hard way, then. She might have given up her photoshoot time to some cute, friendly little thing, but not to someone like Johanna, someone so self-obsessed she seemed to move in between Maddie and the camera on auto-pilot, slapping a hand to her hip as she showed off her less-than-impressive ass to the lens.

Maddie huffed, her cheeks puffing a bit as she watched Johanna try to strut her bitchy stuff. Maddie immediately would take a big step backward, lining herself up even with the German, and swing her own hips hard to the side, hip checking the brunette and aiming to bump that butt out of the way so that hers could take center stage again! "I don't lose contests, you know. So maybe you should agree to the friendly thing before I get angry and—"

The two girls were both practically talking over each other, but the suited woman spoke with enough authority to cause them both to get silent. And, once again, she was suggesting something a little more tense as the subject for the shoot. Maddie grumbled, bringing her Johanna-adjacent hand down to give the girl's left butt cheek a squeeze, grabbing onto it and treating it roughly as her fingers and palm pressed into it. "If she really wants this ass kicked, fine. I'd still do a friendly shoot, but I guess obviously some people aren't good with that. So how do we want to do it, then? Go until Jojo's so humiliated she admits she doesn't deserve a shoot, and then we can start my official photoshoot?"