Stephanie once again hit her head down on the mat as Bret shoved her attack aside. "No, for the last time, that is not going to work! You cannot spear me when you have done nothing to soften me up first!" he yelled.
Stephanie and Bret had been at this for hours, and there were only two days left in her training. She had come really far, and had learned a lot in the last week, but she was still struggling in their practice fights. She had come to understand that there was a lot more to actually being in a match than just being angry at her opponent, but she still wasn't sure how to translate her acquired basic knowledge into a move that could win a match for her.
"Well, what I am supposed to try? I have gotten down all the basics, I can grapple with confidence now, and I am in shape. But I have no way to finish anyone off!" She was a little miffed at how he had been treating her today. His kicks to her gut were starting to pile up, and she basically had to ice her entire body for the entire weekend where they practiced top rope maneuvers, so the bruises were not getting any better.
"You aren't listening to me. Yeah, you need those kinds of moves, but first, stop attacking recklessly and allowing me to dominate you." Bret had not lost a touch of the arrogance that had defined him to Stephanie since they first met. He still had not even taken off his sunglasses once, and had not even looked like he was breaking a sweat as he countered her moves.
"Well, I can't just keep trying to-
Stephanie was abruptly cut off as Bret swung his fist into her gut, and grabbed her sides before lifting her up and performing an Atomic Drop. Her back flared up in pain, and she yelled out for the first time. Her eyes watered with tears, as Bret stood over her with a sickly smile on his face.
"Never lose your-
"Focus. I know" she said, with a grunt on her face and swearing in her mind that she was going to get him back for that. She couldn't help but let out a few tears as she got back to her feet and retreated to the turnbuckle.
The pain was really becoming unbearable in this training, as they had to practice on 12 consecutive days due to the time constraints she was working under. The bruises on her face and arms were commented on by her supervisor, Gillisley, who asked her what she was doing outside of work to show up that way. She had told him something vague about being in car accident, but more than a few people had given her strange looks at work. Nobody else had tried to contact her, but she was starting to become more and more nervous as she knew she would be returning to the road soon.
She strode into the middle of the ring and locked up with Bret before delivering two kicks to his gut and pushing him back. She went in for a body press pin attempt, but he knocked her back. She bounced back against the ropes, something that she had become quite good at even before starting training with Bret through her workouts at the corporate gym, and launched into a clothesline that connected with Bret's neck. He popped right back up and threw a haymaker, which she dodged. She tried to grab him into a headlock, but he countered and did a snap mare takedown.
She was woozy on the ground after her head had smashed into the canvas, but as she tried to get back up, he grabbed her shoulder and turned her around so she was parallel to his body before he did his signature Russian Legsweep and her back screamed out in even more pain. Knowing what was coming next, Stephanie scrambled towards the ropes, but it was too late. Bret had her cut off, and turned her around onto her back before sliding his leg in between hers and pulled her legs into a pretzel around his own and turning over to lock in the Sharpshooter.
He had done this move to her in yesterday's session, and it felt no less pleasant then. Her entire body locked up in a horrible stretching sensation and she yelled out in agony, and she tried her best to move, but he had her locked in. She had no choice but to say, "Stop, I give up!"
He let her go, and then looked down at her as she could hardly move. "Yeah, I got a little ahead of myself there."
She muttered shakily, "You think? That really fucking hurt, worse than yesterday." He smiled at her admission and looked off towards the darkened window.
He said, "You looked better, and had a decent sequence going."
She slowly got to her feet and said, "Can you show me how to do the Sharpshooter, too?" She has been persistent in trying to get him to show her the Pedigree, but he hadn't done so yet. She had tried it on her own to the dummy while he was in the locker room, and he had caught her doing it while walking out and laughed out loud. It wasn't a very good attempt as the dummy slipped out from her legs as she tried to do a jump and landed on its back somehow.
"Oh, so I suppose this is you acknowledging that the Sharpshooter isn't just 'that submission move that the Rock does'?" She turned bright red and looked away. The first time he had done it to her, she asked him why he was using the Rock's submission move. Apparently her knowledge of wrestling history was much weaker than she initially thought, as the Rock had taken the move from Bret rather than the other way around.
"I told you that I didn't watch many matches growing up. I didn't travel with my dad all that much and never really had an interest."
"Really? You thought that I was copying The Rock?"
"Look, I am sorry."
"Yeah, I will show you. The fucking Rock must have shown me a lot, huh?"
"For what it's worth, I don't like the guy much either. He gave me a Rock Bottom on a weekly basis for a while last year and kept calling me-
"A filthy, disgusting, brutal-
"No! That was Jericho. And that is in the past now. Can you just show me?" Bret looked at her for a second somewhat seriously. She wondered why he was doing that before he opened his mouth.
"I gather that you have been keeping our little meetings secret. If you ever use one of my moves, people might ask questions. Questions that might make both of our lives uncomfortable." Stephanie got the gist of what he meant. Her dad would really hate it if he ever found out where she was being trained.
"Look, I can just say I was copying the Rock, right? And if I am ever in the position to actually use the move, I must have done something good, right?"
"So you finally understand that you can't just jump into a finishing move, then? Good. Maybe you have learned something."
She just looked at him with a pissed off expression. He was really trying her patience.
He said, "Okay, we can do this." She looked at his weary face and decided that she was determined to do this as well. Having Bret's move on her side might just be what she needed to give her an edge.
For the next hour, Bret schooled her on the precise techniques of locking in the Sharpshooter and the situations to use it in. She took a little while to actually get the turnover part right on the dummy, but she was able to grasp it. She had tried it out on him a few times towards the end and he broke the hold each time, but it was obvious form his feedback that she got the concept.
It was past midnight, and she was running late getting home, but the session was really productive. On the way out, while he was in the locker room, she snuck back into the ring and tried to Pedigree the dummy, pretending to be in a match scenario and imagining the crowd all around her. She focused as hard as she could and jumped with the dummy's head between her legs before allowing gravity to slam them both to the ground.
"Well, that was a little bit better."
She turned around to see Bret had seen her do it, again.
"Look, I am trying my best."
"Yeah, here's the thing. You know that move pretty well from watching that douchebag Helmsley for years, so I don't think I even need to teach you. Just do it on your own until you make it look damn good. The truth is that it isn't hard to do, but it is hard to do well. Just keep practicing it on your own. Keep that dummy, I have many more."
Bret picked up his bag, and with a wave, left the building. She picked up the dummy and walked over to her car with the dummy in hand after collecting her own bag.
Driving home that night, she had really started to think about what her goals really were. It sounded so much better when she was first trying to pick herself up from nothing, but the fact of the matter was that getting the Women's championship wasn't going to be a very plausible goal for quite some time as the women's division had almost doubled in size since she had left because of the WCW influx and due to the explosion in developmental wrestlers coming up through the ranks, something she had seen firsthand while having to handle some of the contract negotiations.
Speaking of her recent signings, one of her very first, a musclebound monster named Brock Lesnar, had entered into the title picture relatively quickly and had allied himself with Paul Heyman, who she knew from her Invasion days. She had heard that Vince was thinking about putting Heyman in charge of Smackdown as GM since she and Shane were not interested in the job. That might be interesting, she thought. Her dad clearly had a twisted sense of revenge, as he wanted to put his two top former business rivals in positions of power under him.
And one of the others, John Cena, had gone to Smackdown and tried to start something with Kurt Angle, who had texted her about it with a note of displeasure about the rookie. She made sure that she did not tell him that she had signed the new guy, who was another musclebound freak.
As she pulled into the parking lot, she almost collapsed from exhaustion as she walked up the steps to her room with all of her gear in tow. It had been like this every night for her, but she was able to get in and immediately plopped down on the couch to go to sleep. She was glad that she had asked for the next day off, her first work day off since coming to the office, and had gotten it.
As the sun shone through her window and rested on her face the next morning, she rose from the couch and walked over to the kitchen to eat some breakfast. After having a bowl of cereal, she drifted over to her computer to check her email. As usual, she saw nothing but ads, except for one message.
It was from Trish Stratus and simply listed her cell phone number and told her to call her as soon as possible. This was certainly going to be interesting, Stephanie thought to herself.
What the hell did Trish want from her?
She went over to her phone and dialed the number in the message. The other end was picked up almost instantly and she heard Trish say, "Stephanie, is that you?"
She was surprised by the urgency that Trish seemed to be in to talk to her. This came basically out of nowhere and she hoped that Trish hadn't figured out her plans somehow. Maybe she just wanted to talk to someone in accounting about her merch sales, but that couldn't be it, as Kurt was the only one who should know what she was doing. Stephanie replied with tangible unease and worry.
"Um, yes, it is Stephanie. Is there a reason why you wanted me to call you?"
"What? No. I need to talk to you about Hunter."
Stephanie dropped the phone from her hand and turned white. What was happening? Why would Trish need to speak to her about Hunter? Her mind was racing a thousand miles per hour, and she was starting to get that old nervous feeling that shortened her breath. She was brought back into reality by hearing from the phone, "Stephanie, you still there? Are you okay?"
She picked up the phone and said, "Yeah, I am. What is it that you want to tell me precisely?"
"Look, has he come into contact with you recently? This might sound awkward, because you guys are, um, not together anymore, but it is kind of important."
"No, Trish, I haven't seen him besides on TV since March. And I am pretty sure that is how he wants it" she reflected sadly.
"Well, maybe you have that wrong. The talk backstage from what I have heard is that he has been asking about you a lot recently. He cornered Kurt a few weeks ago and demanded to know if you two were together, and he stormed into your dad's office at Smackdown and wanted to know where you were."
Stephanie was shocked to hear this. She had no idea that Hunter still even thought of her, which had been comforting as she felt she could make a new impression on him, but at the same time, it was depressing. She was feeling so many different things at one time that she just wanted to hide in a corner and stay there for hours. She composed herself the best that she could and said to Trish, "That is surprising to me. I haven't talked with anyone in the company since I was forced out, except my brother and dad."
"Yeah, well apparently you are a very touchy subject around Hunter, as I found out." That comment sounded sort of sad and cryptic to Stephanie, and she wondered what had occurred. It didn't sound good at all.
"What happened?"
"I made a comment regarding Hunter's, um, sexual frustrations-
"What? Why would you say that?"
"Let me finish. Okay, it was ill-advised, but sort of funny nonetheless, and as you may have found out last night, I lost the Women's Title to Molly Holly, so I wasn't in the best of moods, and so I decided to rib him in the locker room after we crossed paths. He stormed out and then I said something about, um, you, and he freaked out."
"What did you say about me?" Stephanie wasn't trying to sound hostile, but it surprised her that anyone in the WWE still talked about her.
"It's not important, it was about Hunter's lack of a relationship with you as of now, but he absolutely flipped shit and became terrifying."
"What ended up happening?"
"He ran back into the room and picked me up by the throat before throwing me into the wall."
"Oh my god, are you okay?"
"Yes, I am fine, it didn't hurt, but it clearly isn't doing anyone any good that he still has issues with you, and maybe you should talk to him."
"Um, Trish, you probably know that I had to leave the company. I don't think that can be arranged."
"Then why is your email address in the WWE Corporate Ledger that we all have?"
Fuck, Stephanie thought to herself. How could she have been so clueless and sloppy? She decided to come clean, as she had no other option, really.
"I work in the accounting office for WWE as of now. That is why my email is there. But I did have to leave the shows, as you well know. In fact, I recall seeing you there that night when I was getting dragged away by security."
"Um, yes. I witnessed that, and it made me feel like crap what they did to you. It was as bad as what Regal and your dad did to me last year. I am sorry you had to go through that." Stephanie was a little surprised to hear Trish acknowledge what happened and why it was wrong. It meant a lot to her, as it seemed that the whole world was fine with it and willing to erase her from history. The fact that Trish still remembered her and what happened meant that she was someone Stephanie could put trust in.
"Well, I appreciate that Trish. But I can't get in contact with Hunter. It won't go well."
"You don't know that. All I know is that he has become a miserable bastard since you were kicked out. And I am tired of his shit, as is most of the locker room, so I am just asking if you can do something about it." Stephanie thought that maybe Trish was someone who could help her on her return, and sounded genuine about her feelings, so she decided to throw caution to the wind and come out with it.
"Trish, can I trust you to keep a secret?"
"Um, I suppose so."
"I am coming back on the road in a few weeks. My contract will be up, and my dad is going to re-sign me."
"Really? That is great for you."
"Yeah. You can't tell anyone. The only other person who knows is Kurt, and he knows not to tell anyone either."
"Okay, that is fine. Most people around here have sort of forgotten about you, so I am sure that you won't have much of a problem until you get here."
"Yeah, that was kind of what I thought. I will probably have to face Hunter in the future, if only to get some closure. I am sure that he will get off your back when that happens." Stephanie didn't reveal that she was secretly terrified of that moment when it came. She still didn't have a clue what she was going to say to him, or how he would react to her presence.
"Well good luck with your return and everything. If you need anything before coming onto the road, let me know."
"All right, bye Trish."
"Bye, Stephanie."
Stephanie hung up the phone with quite a bit of anxiety. It wasn't how she thought her return would be, but having a friend among the women might be something that could help her. It certainly could have been worse, with Trish deciding to plan locker room ambushes or something like that on her. Trish might be as close as a friend she would ever find from women in the company. Even when she was with Test, they all hated her.
But before she could return, she still had to finish her training. She decided that the dummy she had brought home needed to be Pedigreed some more. There was enough space in the living room to practice. Maybe she could actually figure something out and wipe the smirk from Bret's face for a change. The thought made her smile slightly to herself.
Please Review, guys! I am really starting to think about taking this into a pretty long story, longer than I planned, and if anyone has any feedback they would like to share, it would be appreciated quite a bit.
On a side note, we need to see more of a push for Cesaro on RAW! No more Bella and Mini Gator nonsense, and let's see some wrestling like on NXT! Just my opinion.
