An Interesting Contender(For Bluemouse)

"Oh you don't have to have a gimmick!" Drake said, "I hope I wasn't giving you that kind of impression. No, you see, I've taken a liking to you simply because you're a fighter, and that's it. All my other girls are performers of some kind, and while they're all plenty strong, none of them are truly just wrestlers. You'd be a first!"

He got up, walking over to a small fridge in the corner of the room. "Something to drink?" he asked, as he opened the door and took out a can of soda, popping open the cap and taking a short sip before continuing.

"Tomomi is I guess a pro-style grappler," he said, "I'm not too familiar with terms or anything, but it's not like she knows judo or jiu-jitsu or anything. Everything she knows is from pro-style trainers." He paused for a second as he considered Cassie's comment. "That wouldn't be too bad actually," he said, "Heavens know the trouble Chigusa has with grapplers, maybe if she properly learned how to fight against them she wouldn't lose so badly..."

He pulled a drink out of the refridgerator anyways, despite Cassie's response, and handed it to her. "Here, take it," he said. Afterwards, he went back around to his spot behind the desk.

"It's something that just sort of happened," he said, in response to how he got into pro-wrestling management, "I mean, when I brought my company to Japan, the first person who signed a contract happened to be Chigusa Yuuki," he gestured at another poster behind him, of a purple-haired singer dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform, "And she just happened to be a pro-wrestler as well. If you want to know how that happened, you'd have to ask her." Of course, that wasn't the complete story, but Drake wasn't about to tell Cassie everything. These are things that nobody else needed to know.

Cassie took the can from Drake and turned it over in her hands. "Um, if I signed with you would I ever fight other girls you manage? I mean... I love to teach and learn new things with martial arts, but if they were my competition, I wouldn't really want to show them how to beat me..."

She thought for a moment. "I really am just a fighter. I don't know about fighting, actually, but I guess I'm really just a... martial artist. I know I'm young, but I've been doing them or learning about them since I was a baby. I think that I'd be pretty valuable to your group if I signed on. My family's jujitsu is very highly regarded. We have a school in new york city now and everything.

"It's weird that so many of yours are singers, too. I'd think that spending so much time on singing and music and concerts and doing your hair and makeup would... you know, take time away from training. Are they good? Like do you have any top contenders in AFW? Is Tomomi new? She looks so young. I guess I do too, but... she's seems really nice." Cassie was struggling to find a balance between speaking her mind about the technical abilities of the other girls and being polite. Not that she didn't want to be polite, she certainly didn't want to say anything bad or upset anyone, but it was her nature to be honest. She was raised to speak her mind, and tought that if you do it kindly then people would listen to your criticism and not be angry. She hoped that was true.

"Oh, and who's Chi...Chigusa?" She asked, looking at her poster.

Drake pondered Cassie's first question for a second. Now that he thought about it, his girls didn't seem to do much fighting against one another. "Well, it's not like it's not allowed," Drake said, "But for some reason or other, most of my girls don't fight against each other. I think in part its because they know each other's moves too well!"

He nodded as he heard Cassie tell him how she could possibly be a valuable trainer. He could see that already from her fight, she certainly was a superior grappler in every way. "I know, that's why I called you in here," Drake said, "You don't have to worry about being too young or anything. Tomomi's only a year older than you are. You're already this talented, so of course you'd be a valuable addition to my team."

He turned around then, looking at the posters hanging up on the wall. "Don't underestimate any of these girls though," he said, "Even though they're Idols, they've got more toughness in them than you can believe." He turned back around to face Cassie, a glint in his eye. "Take Tomomi for example," he said, "She's been wrestling for a little over a year now, and she just gets stronger every day!"

"Or Chigusa, who's probably the strongest girl I've got," Drake said, "She's only 21, and already she's one of the most accomplished artists I've ever worked with. And on top of that, she's one of my most successful wrestlers. Former tag team champion, with another shot at the belt soon!" He seemed extremely happy with this, looking at the poster silently for a few seconds with a smile on his face.

"And of course, that could be you," Drake said, turning back to Cassie.

"Me?" Cassie was a little surprised. "But... I'm not a tag team. I've never tagged....teamed. Um... I think I'd be good at winning. It seems like a lot of the girls here are sort of... brawlers and pro wrestlers. I don't think many have the same kind of background as me. Just... I'm a lot smaller than most of the girls and everything. I know there are no weight classes or anything, but... I want competitive, challenging fights. I don't want to just tap out some girl off the street, and I reaaally don't want to get put in a match against, like, a gorilla."

She fumbled with the can some more. She was too nervous to drink anything. "I guess that would be your job. That'd be good, getting me good fights. And I don't think I'd be very good at, uh, negotiating with the AFW people myself. I'm not very persuasive." She started scanning over the first page of the contract without really reading it.

Suddenly she got an idea and leaped to her feet, almost throwing her drink in the process. She fumbled it for a moment before setting it down on the desk. "Excuse me, one second." She skipped to the door and swung it open fast enough that Tomomi almost fell through it. "Hi!" Cassie stepped through the door and closed it behind her. "Uh, about this contract... is there anything I should know? Like... is there anything bad in it? That I should watch out for? I said I'd have my dad look over it but if I can I want to start getting good fights right away and I could use the money and I want to start trying to be independent and fight my own battles you know so maybe you could just tell me a bit about the contract and what it's like...eh?"

"Oh don't worry!" Drake said, "I don't expect you to go for the tag team title. I'm saying that perhaps one day you'll be going for a title shot as well! Perhaps even the championship... You certainly are talented enough." He nodded, as if thinking about something. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get plenty of challenging fights here," he said, "There aren't many jobbers in this league, so I'm sure you'll have plenty of good fights."

He noticed just how nervous Cassie was about all of this, and he was about to tell her to calm down and relax a bit, when suddenly the girl stood up and jumped right over to the door. Tomomi had been leaning against the door, listening in on their conversation. When the door suddenly swung open, Tomomi fell forward with a yelp, falling right into Cassie. But she recovered quickly, getting back up without knocking Cassie over. "Oh!" Tomomi gasped, before getting back her composure.

"Um, the contract?" Tomomi said, "Well, if it's anything like mine, there's not much on it that's unfair," she said, a bit overwhelmed by Cassie's ridiculously fast speaking, especially since her English wasn't so good. "You don't have to sign with Drake immediatly," she said, "Like you can schedule some more fights yourself, without his help. This would just make scheduling fights and getting the opponents you want easier."

She shrugged. "I mean, the wrestling part of my contract isn't very important," she said, "Management for my idol career is more important than management for my wrestling career. It's a lot harder to get big shows and manage the money from my music sales without good management."

"Oh. Hmm." Cassie thought hard about it. "Well I don't sing or anything. BUT I'm learning Japanese. A little. Konbanwa! That's... just about all I know for now. Hm... how many of you guys are there? I mean I guess I could just count the posters or whatever. And what do you mean your wrestling isn't that important? Sounds like someone too lazy to train!" Cassie chided, trying to make it very clear that she was just joking. "I mean, if you don't spend enough time with your singing, you might sound bad and people might not like you as much. If you don't focus on your fighting, you might get beat up pretty bad. That'd hurt a lot more I think."

Cassie pushed through the door and motioned with a smile for Tomomi to follow her in. She stood behind the chair she was sitting in and leaned against it on her elbows. She was pretty tired from the match and from the day... she was getting pretty achy. "Um, Mr Drake, I think I just decided that I'd like to sign with you... at least for a while. Is there like a time in the contract that I'd have to be.. your client... or something?

"Oh, and um...." She remembered something Drake had said that was suddenly a little troubling. "What did you mean about... protection? About offering me protection? From who? Is there... does someone want to hurt me?"

"Hmm, well my English isn't too great," Tomomi said, "I guess talking isn't too difficult, though you should learn more Japanese! This is Japan, after all!" She nodded, as if she had just made some big point. "Don't worry, I spend plenty of time training both my voice and my body. Some of the dancing I do is just as tiring as wrestling! And trust me when I say this, I don't get beaten up. Not without beating up my opponent, at least!"

She followed Cassie back into the room, not making any more comments while the final bit of negotiation happened. "So you've decided to sign on?" Drake said, "Great!" He stood up and approached Cassie, holding out his hand. "Welcome to the company!" he said, a bright smile on his face.

"Don't worry about time limits or anything, it's written in the contract that should you ever want to terminate, you can," he said, "As for protection, well it's not about really stopping someone with a grudge on you from hurting you. Not that you have any people like that, of course. It's more like we'll prevent the administration here at AFW from taking advantage of you. Trust me, it's a good decision to sign on as quickly as you have, since if you just stayed alone like this, who knows what could've happened!"

Cassie studied the contract for what seemed like a long time with everybody watching her. Finally she grabbed a pen from the desk and looked up at Drake. "Where do I sign?" She asked and went about signing and dating and initialing.

"How many people do you manage?" She counted posters. "Am I... number eight? Do you do workouts together or anything? That seems like it'd make sense. Like a pro wrestling training camp. Or something. It's always good to have supportive people around when you're getting ready to fight."

Cassie looked up at Tomomi for a moment and smiled. Then she looked back at Drake and smiled some more. This was more news to send back to her family. "Oh," she said, having just thought of something really important. "How do I, um, ya know... get paid?"

Drake pointed at the dotted line at the bottom of the first page. "Sign there," he said. After she was done, he took the contract, and put it in a file on his desk. "Congratulations Cassie! You are now officially a member of Starlight Productions!" Drake said. He held out his hand, "Welcome to the team!"

"Currently my company is in charge of 7 girls, 8 including you of course," Drake said, "Though you signed here with me, I'm actually not personally going to be your manager. Rather, my company is going to do all that. Don't worry, we'll make life much easier for you here."

"As for workouts and stuff, well that's mostly up to the girls themselves," Drake said, "I don't force them to workout with each other, they usually take the initiative. Of course, I'll provide you with the numbers of all my girls, so if you want to schedule a spar or something you can just call them. And I'll introduce you to the rest of them sometime later, when I can gather all of them here."

"As for payment," Drake said, "Well, you've got your base AFW contract salary, which we will negotiate to increase, and as your fame increases that will go up as well." He paused for a second. "Of course, if you want extra money, there's commercials, product lines, advertisements, all sorts of things that can bring in cash. We'll manage that for you too" He shrugged. "Honestly how much you make is proportional to how famous you want to be. Take Tomomi, she's plenty famous and has many fans, so she makes a ton of money."

"Now, I'm sure that in this new place, you're probably not too familiar," Drake said, "Tomomi, why don't you go show her around?" Tomomi gave Drake a look of minor annoyance, since she wanted to leave already, but in the end complied. "Alright then," she said, "Cassie-san, would you mind following me? I'll give you a tour of this place."

Cassie looked at Drake like he was telling a fairy tale. "Wow. If I made lots of money, I could buy like a bed and a dresser, and... maybe a couch. Or a chair." Her fantasies about having money were pathetically mundane. That was okay.

"Okay," She looked up at Tomomi and started to stand but almost froze halfway up. She wasn't too oblivious to tell when she was being a nuisance. "Oh, I don't want to... ya know, intrude. Or something. You don't have to do that. If you don't want to. I mean you [ican[/i] if you want, um..." She got the distinct feeling that she wasn't helping the state of her nuisance-ness. "I won't stop you." She added more quietly.

She slunk off to the door and turned back to face Drake. "Thanks for your help, Mr Drake." She paused a moment to see what Tomomi was going to do.