Stephanie sighed and yawned into her hands, wondering since when had the WWE creative team gotten this pathetically incompetent.
"Just how hard can it possibly be to come up with one lousy name for a summer rock festival, anyway?" the youngest McMahon muttered darkly to herself, as seated across the table from her, one of the writers proposed, "Let's call it Farmstock--a combination of Farm Aid and Woodstock!"
"Lollagagoogles," another one called out, tripping over the syllables and winding up stuttering out his suggestion.
"OzzKozzB'Gozz," a third writer put forth, smiling pleasedly that he'd thought of such a smart name.
"I have to pee," one of the junior assistants whined at that moment, earning himself a glare from Stephanie just as Paul Heyman started to suggest, "Why don't we forget about ripping off existing festivals, and aim for another, untapped group?" Stephanie rose slightly from her slouched position, asking without much enthusiasm, "What are you saying, Paul?"
"What we need here is a title that'll be immediately associated with rock n' roll in people's minds, am I right?" the former owner of ECW pointed out, and at Stephanie's nod, he went on, "Then there you have it: let's rip off the name of one of the biggest acts in rock history!"
"Rolling Stones?" Stephanie guessed.
"Led Zeppelin," a writer in his early thirties suggested.
"AC/DC," another one cheered.
"Kiss," a third one put forward.
"Milli Vanilli!" a petite bottled blonde squealed happily, playing around with her hair as she called out the particular duo's name.
"Huh?" At this suggestion, all heads turned to gawk at her, causing the little blonde to whimper and duck under all the eyeballs fixed on her as she sniveled, "It was just a suggestion..."

"Well, I was actually thinking more along the lines of Spinal Tap," Heyman chose that minute to quickly reinsert himself into the conversation, causing Stephanie to shoot straight up and screech, "Spinal Tap?! What the hell kind of laughingstock do you want to convert the tour formerly known as Woodfest into?!" Heyman winced under the supersonic attack, his measly little ponytail being blown straight back from the force of Stephanie's rebel yell, as he hurriedly explained himself, "Well, Spinal Tap is an easier-to-rip-off name than the others. I mean, how are we going to mimic a name like Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin?"
"We can substitute Hiss for Kiss," the writer who'd suggested Kiss offered so very helpfully. Stephanie rolled her eyes, muttering in a dry voice, "Yes, that will really associate the festival with rock music and Kiss."
"Red Elfin for Led Zeppelin," another writer called out eagerly.
"Again, nothing to do with music--am I right, Steph?" Heyman spoke hurriedly. Stephanie sighed, conceding grudgingly, "As pathetic as this sounds, yes, you're right."
"But with Spinal Tap, we can easily substitute in Vinyl Act--vinyl's immediately associated with records, while concertgoers can make the connection between Vinyl Act and Spinal Tap as soon as they hear the two names pronounced in the same sentence," Heyman pitched.
"God, I can't believe the best name we've been able to come up with in all these days is Vinyl Act," Stephanie groaned to herself.

At that moment, a bunch of EMT's led away one of the wrestlers-turned-rockers toward the nurse's office, causing Stephanie to look up suspiciously and demand, "What happened to him?" One of the EMT's paused long enough to disclose, "He got hit in the head with one of Test's flying drumsticks, and suffered a minor concussion. He'll be all right, though." They both watched then, as Kurt Angle blabbed away, "Flying like the bumblebee, stinging like the leech! No one can touch me! I'm Kurttiiiiiiiiieeeeee!!!"
"Uh, after Nurse Helmsley bonks him on the head with a sledgehammer to cancel out his concussion, that is," the EMT quickly improvised, causing Stephanie to sigh and smack her forehead in frustration.
"What kinds of music-ignorant simpletons do I have working this festival, anyway?" she sighed exhaustedly. At that moment, there was a loud thwacking sound, followed by a deep male voice yelping, "Owie! My other eye!" The EMT who'd informed Stephanie about Kurt's condition looked back with a tired groan, before speaking into his walkie-talkie, "Yeah, we're going to need some back-up here. That's right, Test just took out his other eye with his drumsticks!"

Over at the other end of the amphitheater, which Vince McMahon had rented out for his wrestlers-turned-rock-stars to rehearse in until the real bands could arrive to kick off the tour, the newly reinstated Jeff Hardy was trying to teach his bandmates some alternative rock fashion.
"Honestly, it's the latest rage these days," Mr. Skittle Xtreme was babbling enthusiastically, dipping his camel-hair brush into his can of rainbow-colored body paint as he spoke. "And besides, chicks love the icky gooey factor." Shane glared suspiciously at his fellow North Carolinian, forcing himself not to shudder in disgust as Jeff slathered on a generous helping of paint onto the superhero's arms and neck, before grumbling, "Holy gross-outs, Citizen Hardy. Are you positive girls actually go for this type of thing?" Jeff nodded happily, his hair flying back and forth as though he were headbanging, while sitting beside him, the newly-painted Matt grumbled, "I feel like the poor man's Picasso right about now."

Jeff cheerfully ignored his brother's comment, concentrating instead on turning Shane into the poor man's Frida to complement Matt's poor man's Picasso, being torn away from his important job only when a hysterical Shannon came careening toward the terrible threesome from the direction of the unisex restrooms, nearly in tears as he cried, "I'm breaking out! I think I'm allergic to your disgusting body paint, Hardy!" Jeff blinked in confusion, mumbling, "That can't be, it's all-organic paint--litchi, guayaba, jalapeño peppers, goat cheese, fungi mold..." Matt and Shane turned green when they heard the ingredients of the multi-colored slime they'd just been bathed in, while Shannon glared at the younger Hardy and groaned sarcastically, "Gee, how could I possibly be allergic to that toxic waste you call paint?!" Jeff shrugged, trying to find a silver lining and muttering defensively, "Hey, at least you got to see some pretty hot stuff in the unisex, right?" Shannon rolled his eyes at Jeff's impish wink, whining, "Yeah, you won't believe what a turn-on it is to see Rikishi and Albert washing underneath their armpits in front of the toilet sinks!"

"Morons!" Matt, who'd been pretty quiet until then, suddenly exploded when he could take no more of all the intelligent conversation around him. Tearing at his long, black hair, he proceeded to add, "I'm surrounded by morons!"
"Thanks a lot, Citizen Hardy," Shane sniffed huffily, looking insulted that he'd been lumped into the same category as Skittle Jeff and everybody's favorite MF'r. At that moment, Rob happened to wander past them, overhearing Matt's outburst and calling out encouragingly, "Dude, take a chill pill. It'll all be better once the real bands get here...right?"


Camryn frowned as she stuck her head into the long, white stretch limo and found out who would be her and the rest of Scarlet Rage's chauffeur for their trip to the airport.
"Move over, Cutler, I'm driving," the tall, raven-haired lead guitarist spoke bluntly, annoyance evident in her cold emerald eyes when Deron remained happily planted in the driver's seat and blew her a raspberry to convey his response.
"Aw, c'mon, Cruise, lighten up already," the blonde Miami native chirped brightly, absently playing around with the steering wheel as he spoke. "I don't drive that badly, do I?"
"Yeah, Camryn, let's just get this show on the road already--we have to get to Stamford by this evening," Raven chimed in from where she was, seated behind Deron and absently applying a new layer of magenta nail polish over her old burgundy coat. Camryn flashed her an irritated glare, then focused back on Deron as she reminded him frostily, "The last time you drove a car, it wound up compounded for three months, remember?"
"And the last time you drove a car, oh gorgeous guitar goddess, it wound up crumpled in a ditch, remember?" Deron sang back, mimicking her tone of voice and narrowly avoiding getting punched in the nose for his tongue-in-cheek reply.

Raven, for her part, had gotten bored of playing peacemaker, and was now blowing on her nails to dry them, just as Shannon and Rusty stalked over to the limo and pulled the doors open to get inside. Shannon got in wordlessly as usual, while the normally laid-back Rusty actually glared impatiently at where Camryn and Deron were bickering back and forth, before snapping in a huffy voice, "Will both of you just shut up and drive?" Deron's dark blue eyes widened in surprise at hearing the tone of Rusty's voice, as he leaned back and asked Raven, "Jeez, what crawled up her pants and bit her in the ass today?" Rusty's left eyebrow shot up angrily at this remark, and as Raven started to reply, "Oh, it's her pre-time of the month, if you get what I mean," the second guitarist of Scarlet Rage promptly wound up and bitch-slapped the taste right out of Deron's month.
"You might want to put some ice on that," Camryn sneered, but Deron just stuck out his tongue at her and breezed, "It's only a little slap, I'm not incapacitated or anything, and can still drive. Now get in already, we're going to miss our flight if you keep going off on this idea that I'm a bad driver." Camryn scowled, before angrily crossing over to the passenger's side of the limo and jerking the door open so hard, she nearly yanked it right off its hinges. Seating herself beside Deron and crossing her long legs in front of her, she shot him one last glare before slamming the door shut. Deron grinned, before starting the engine and shifting the gear stick into Drive to peel off the curb at one-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour in a twenty-five-mph zone. Inside the limo, Shannon screeched out a startled string of curses at being so rudely tossed back in her seat, Camryn's scowl darkened even further, Deron whooped and pumped his fist joyously in the air, Rusty continued to bristle in her PMS-induced bad mood, and Raven cheerfully sang along to the Aerosmith disc still stuck in the car's CD player. Too caught up in their individual reactions, none of the Ragers seemed to notice that nobody was wearing a seatbelt.

Deron had driven all of two hundred yards when the loud, shrill wail of police sirens broke into Shannon's cursing and Raven's screeched duet with Steven Tyler on "Dude Looks Like A Lady." Camryn leaned back in her seat, a satisfied little smirk on her face as though her point had just been proven, while Deron merely frowned, confused and wondering out loud with a sulky pout, "But I didn't do anything wrong..."
"Pull over! This is the L.A.P.D., I repeat, pull over!" a distorted, metallic-sounding voice came over the loudspeakers of the black-and-white tailing their limo, and Deron had no choice but to slam on the brakes, nearly sending Camryn flying right out the windshield while giving the rest of Scarlet Rage concussions from banging against the backs of the front seats. As the limo obediently screeched to a halt and the police cruiser behind them stopped as well, a furious Camryn turned to Deron and proceeded to strangle him with a rebel yell of, "Cutler, you motherfucking idiot!" The rest of the band seated in the back slowly began to recover their wits as well, before Rusty and Shannon teamed up to simultaneously smack Deron in the head for nearly giving them amnesia, while Raven anxiously whipped out her compact and checked to make sure she hadn't gotten any unattractive purple bruises from her conk to the head.

A tall, rather handsome officer with thick dark brown hair and cold charcoal-gray eyes walked over to the limo, tapping on the tinted window of the driver's side with the end of his flashlight and waiting impatiently for somebody to answer. An automatic lock was popped and the power window soon rolled down, to reveal a tanned blonde youth in his early twenties seated behind the wheel, being throttled by the furious raven-haired young woman beside him as two additional brunettes abused the back of his head from behind.
"Can I help you, dude--uh, I mean, officer?" the blonde man wheezed with some difficulty, his face beginning to turn a rather interesting shade of blue that nearly matched the color of his eyes. The policeman frowned, directing his words to the three women who were brutalizing their fair-haired companion as he requested curtly, "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you--all three of you--to stop assaulting your friend here." The trio of brunettes ignored his words, while their hapless blonde bandmate assured the policeman, "Oh, don't worry about it--they'll stop once they get the sadism out of their systems."

As if to prove his point, Camryn, Rusty, and Shannon finally let go at that moment, and Deron leaned back against his seat and rubbed tenderly at his bruised neck and head, pointing out with a wince, "See? Just like I said. I'm Deron, by the way--and you are...?"
"Brest, Officer Brest," the policeman supplied, causing Deron to explode into a fit of high-pitched giggles, occasionally slapping at his exposed knees through their ripped faded blue jeans in his mirth. Officer Brest arched an eyebrow at this, before Camryn scowled and pushed Deron's head into the car horn so that she could speak directly with the policeman, snapping rudely, "Listen, just ticket us and piss off already, would you? We're going to be late at the rate you're flirting with Cutler over here!" The officer frowned at her words as the limo continued to let out a long, stretched-out beep, before Deron finally freed his head from Camryn's grasp and argued, "No, don't ticket us--we don't have any money on us right now!" Turning to the dark-haired woman beside him, he quickly urged, "Here, Cruise, flash the guy already so that he'll let us off the hook." Camryn's eyebrows slanted sharply across her forehead, before she scowled and swung with her fist. Deron was smart for once and ducked this time, and the guitarist wound up socking Officer Brest right in the stomach.
"Ooh, nice upper cut there, Cruise," Deron whistled, as the officer's eyes popped out from the impact and he clutched at his abdomen.

At that moment, Raven caught sight of the officer doubled over in pain and decided to join in on the festivities.
"Camryn, how could you do that to him?" the blue-eyed bassist complained, scrambling over to get as close to the policeman as she could while asking sweetly, "Are you all right, Mr. Brest?" At that, Deron started snickering again, but Raven ignored him as she asked the officer instead, "Do you want me to kiss that boo-boo and make it go away?" The officer scowled and stepped back a couple of inches, snapping, "No, I don't want you to kiss it!" Whipping out his handy little notebook, he began scribbling out the first of several fines while muttering, "Let's see...erratic driving, speeding, failure to wear seatbelts, hitting an on-duty policeman, hitting on an on-duty policeman..."
"She had every right for hitting you," Rusty grouchily chipped in her two cents.
"You dumb shit," Shannon muttered under her breath. The officer's eyebrows twitched, before he turned the page and continued writing out fines. Raven, meanwhile, was saying, "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider that?" while batting her eyelashes seductively at the cop, who ignored her and turned his attention to Rusty and Shannon instead.
"Care to add anything else while you've got the chance?" he demanded dryly.
"Yeah, you stink," Rusty muttered, training glassy brown eyes on him as Shannon added, "Jerk-off." The officer frowned suspiciously as he noticed Rusty's slightly slurred speech and glazed expression, before pointing to the coffee-haired guitar player and ordering, "All right, Miss, get out of the car."

"Hey," Raven started to complain, as Rusty shrugged before lazily stepping out of the limo and batting away the officer's hands when he tried to search her, "how come she insults you and you grope her, yet here I am flirting away and you won't even notice me?" Everybody ignored her and focused instead on the officer and Rusty, and when the former finally turned up a little plastic bag containing a powdery white substance resembling flour, Raven finally lost her patience and exploded in a huff, "Oh, come on! What do I have to do here--flash you to get you to flirt back?!" The officer barely spared her a glance as he disclosed, "Ma'am, I'm gay, so there's no reason for you to try and flirt with me." As if to prove his point, he turned around and winked at Deron while he spoke, causing the blonde frontman to gulp and shrink back in the limo, trying to hide behind Camryn's taller but more slender frame while whimpering, "Camryn, I'm scared now..." Officer Brest, meanwhile, had turned his attention to Rusty and was saying, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'll have to arrest you for cocaine possession." Rusty scowled.
"I just took a couple of hits to get rid of my writer's block," she grumbled. "What's the big deal there, it's not like I inhaled a whole pound up my nose." The policeman didn't budge, as he replied stiffly, "Tell that to the judge. My job is only to arrest you for transporting an illegal substance."

At those words, Camryn, as well as Shannon, both got out of the limo, stalking over purposely toward the officer, with the six-feet-tall lead guitarist towering a good couple of inches over him in her high-heeled leather boots.
"You're not throwing her in jail for this, are you?" Shannon demanded menacingly, cracking her knuckles as though preparing for a fistfight. The policeman stood his ground, unfazed by her hidden threat as he repeated, "The law is the law, ma'am."
"I'm afraid you don't understand, Brest," Camryn growled in a deceptively quiet voice, gritting her teeth in annoyance when behind her, Deron again burst into giggles. "A Troublesome Triplet never goes to jail alone."
"You mess with one Rager, you mess with us all, so you'd better take us to jail with her," Shannon ordered. The officer glanced up and examined their dead-serious expressions, before sighing and explaining, "As tempting as that offer may be, the answer would have to be no. I can't arrest you for no reason."
"Oh?" Camryn and Shannon exchanged meaningful glances, before reaching into the limo and yanking out Deron. Positioning him between them like a battering ram and ignoring the Floridian's outraged squawks, the two women promptly hauled back and slammed him against the officer, knocking him backwards onto the concrete sidewalk where he was nearly run over by a group of teenagers on Rollerblades.
"That good enough reason for you?" Camryn drawled coldly, as she and Shannon released their hold on Deron, who rolled onto the grass, clutching painfully at his head and whining that he was bruising like a tomato...albeit quite the handsome tomato, of course.


Connor tapped his foot impatiently on the tiled airport floor, leaning against his luggage and glancing up at the nearest clock every five minutes as he wondered what was taking his bandmates so long to arrive. Due to some personal problems that had required his immediate attention, the blonde Irish bassist had had to leave two hours before the rest of the band were scheduled to go to the airport, so the members of Urban Trash had collectively agreed to rendezvous at the airport lobby half an hour before their flight to Connecticut was to take off. Now here he was, two hours and twenty minutes later, and still no signs of either Melody or Max. Connor grunted under his breath, absently raking a hand through his disheveled blonde hair as he continued to wait, and mentally debated whether he ought to go on the flight alone if his bandmates failed to show up before takeoff.

Just as Connor had given up on Melody and Max ever arriving and reluctantly pulled up his luggage that the sound of hurried, rather erratic footsteps dashed madly toward him from across the lobby. Connor glanced up, relief evident in his dark blue eyes...relief which was soon replaced with dismay and mild indignation when he saw that the terror twins had come from the direction of the airport bar and were obviously, blatantly drunk out of their minds. Melody and Max staggered and stumbled toward him, leaning on each other for support, the latter wearing her dark red hair in a long black-tipped braid, the former carelessly clutching an opened bottle of vodka, which was sloshing its contents onto nearby people.
"Ah feel puhr-tty, so very puhr-tty," Max was hollering in a hideous Southern drawl. "Ah feel puhr-tty, and hah-ppy, and gaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy!" Melody giggled and hiccupped, before twirling back her chocolate-colored hair and singing out, "I'm the Queen of the World!"
"And I'm the Jester of the World!" Max countered, before collapsing into a hiccupping fit and thankfully shutting up for the moment. Connor clapped both hands against his cheeks, gritting his teeth as he went to work on the duo, stalking up to them and demanding acidly, "Have ye two been drinkin' again?" Melody tried to focus her eyes on him, giggling something about how his two heads looked funny before replying innocently, "Not since we each had a drink."

Connor sighed in frustration as he looked at this new problem he would have to tackle, disbelieving that the two girls would allow themselves to get so wasted again when they'd both solemnly sworn sobriety and sanity just two weeks earlier.
"Listen, Melly, our flight's leavin' in less than ten minutes, and--" he tried to explain, gently nudging both girls in the direction of the airport's check-in center.
"I'm not Melly," Melody cried loudly, nearly taking out one of his eyes as she raised one fist into the air and declared, "I'm Mel Gibson, hear me roar! Lookie, here's my Braveheart face!" And she scrunched up her features in her best attempt at a scowl.
"And I'm the reincarnation of Sid Vicious, woo hoo!" Max declared triumphantly, pulling back a corner of her upper lip in her best Sid Vicious sneer. Connor rolled his eyes.
"Tis drunk that both of ye are," he corrected them crossly, yanking on both girls' arms as though they were his disobedient children and dragging them toward their plane.
"The hills are aliiiiiiiiiiiive...with the sound of muu-muus..." Max sang out obnoxiously, still giggling as she was pulled away. Melody hiccupped, before speaking up guiltily, "I have to pee-pee." Connor felt like tearing his hair out.

Ten Incredibly Long Minutes Later...

Connor gratefully thanked the flight attendant who'd helped him lug in his comrades and settle them into two seats, before sitting down himself and buckling on his seatbelt, reaching forward for a magazine to peruse. Opening the glossy front page of an old issue of Sports Illustrated, the punk bassist glanced to his left at a sleeping red-haired girl, who would have looked almost childishly peaceful and innocent had it not been for the loud snore that suddenly erupted from her throat and nearly sent Connor rocketing right through the airplane's roof. Having regained his composure, Connor settled down in his seat and concentrated on his magazine, immensely thankful that Max had fallen asleep as soon as she'd put one foot into the airplane. Good thing too, he thought wryly to himself, considerin' how if Shorty were awake right now, there'd be plenty of paper cups and peanut bags flyin' all around us! Shrugging as he began flipping idly through the magazine pages, Connor decided that this must be God's way of making things up to him after having the security guards staunchly refuse to let the band onto the plane on account of Max's long, sloppily-woven braid looking like a disguised noose.

Connor was nearly done with his magazine, having stopped only to look at the pictures and read their captions, when he sat bolt upright, suddenly aware that the second half of the terrible twosome was nowhere in sight.
"Damn it," he swore quietly under his breath, disregarding the flight attendant's instructions to stay seated and unbuckling his seatbelt as the plane began to taxi around the runway. "Please don't have Melody gettin' herself into any trouble at this moment!" Ignoring a nearby flight attendant's orders that he return to his seat, Connor began walking down the long, narrow passageway of the airplane, mentally running through all the places that Melody might have hidden herself in.

Melody, for her part, had managed to sneak away unnoticed while Max was snoring and Connor was distracted by the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, and had somehow found herself wandering into the pilots' cabin. Turbulence caused the plane to suddenly jolt and shake before she could open the door and go inside, and Melody paused with her hand on the doorknob, stumbling around for something to steady herself with and beginning to look somewhat sick. Finally, after she felt she'd recovered, the twenty-seven-year-old Australian native twisted the doorknob and boldly stumbled inside, wearing a wide, silly grin on her face and waving at the two pilots as though she were some celebrity on a parade float.
"Hi, I'm *hic* Melody," she chirped brightly, sheepishly apologizing for her hiccups when she'd finished introducing herself. One of the pilots gave her a suspicious glance, asking, "Miss, what are you doing here?" Another wave of turbulence rocked the plane before Melody could answer, and as the pilots exchanged wary looks while awaiting her reply, one of them noticed that their unexpected guest seemed to have turned a rather ill shade of yellow-green in the face.

The airplane heading for Stamford, Connecticut continued ascending, flying steadily until another jolt wracked its entire metallic body. This time, however, turbulence wasn't the culprit, as from inside the plane, a horrified male voice cried out in a thunderous Irish brogue, "MELLY, HOW COULD YE THROW UP ON THE PILOTS?!!!"


That Evening...

Stephanie gazed, stupefied, at the three female figures standing at the amphitheater doors and beaming brightly up at her.
"I don't understand," she muttered to herself, rubbing her ice-blue eyes for the second time in two minutes and wondering whether she was seeing double after having had to spend a whole maddening week with a hopelessly incompetent creative team and even more hopelessly incompetent and accident-prone WWE rock bands.
"What's there to understand?" Amanda chirped loudly, as behind Stephanie, Christian dashed across the room, gleefully waving a wide banner and yodeling, "Welcome to the Peep Show!" Beside Amanda, Caitlin's eyebrows shot up and nearly off her forehead, as the pretty blonde asked curiously, "What's he talking about? What peep show?" Stephanie sighed, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand and muttering, "They're trying to come up with a catchphrase for the Vinyl Act tour. You know, like how Guns N' Roses had their "Welcome to the jungle," and Christian's the self-proclaimed Peeps' Champion?"

As Caitlin stood there and digested this new bit of information, Stephanie cleared her throat pointedly before jerking her thumb toward a second brunette standing a few feet behind Caitlin.
"So who's the new girl?" the Smackdown! general manager demanded, adding bluntly, "There were only two of you on the audition tape that you sent in a couple of weeks ago."
"Well, yeah, but Verbena's not supposed to just have two members, duh," Caitlin explained, as though that solved every problem Stephanie could throw at her. "I mean, sure, Amanda and I are the founding members, but aside from us two, do you know just how many girls have been in Verbena at one time or another? Twelve total, over the course of two-and-a-half years. We just fired a bunch of back-up singers last month, and I guess we must have hired K-Girl before we shot our audition tape, which is why you didn't get to meet her then." Turning to the medium-height, slender brunette behind her, Caitlin pushed her forward and added, "Her name's actually Kyrie, by the way."
"I can introduce myself, Cait," Kyrie spoke up with a smile, before extending her hand to Stephanie and shaking it. "Hi, I'm Kyrie Ann Jates, and I'm a big fan of your show. Honestly. You, ah, wouldn't happen to have some of your Smackdown! Superstars here in this building, would you, Miss McMahon?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Stephanie answered. "And it's Stephanie, not Miss McMahon. We're all equal here, after all. Come with me, and I'll introduce you to the WWE bands who'll be on the Vinyl Act tour with you."

The trio was about to head off into the stage area, when Kyrie suddenly noticed something and spoke up tentatively, "Hey, weren't there four of us just a while ago?" Stephanie and Caitlin stopped as well, and the latter muttered thoughtfully to herself, "Hmm, I could have sworn that Amanda was with us up until that weirdo peep show guy streaked past." Stephanie swept the half-full amphitheater in one expert glance, and had no trouble finding the missing third member of Verbena, as she fixed her eyes on the water cooler and spoke up dryly, "Looks like your friend's doing perfectly fine without any introductions from me." Caitlin and Kyrie glanced up in confusion, wondering what Stephanie was hinting at, before also looking in the direction that the Smackdown! GM had her eyes trained on and doing identical double takes.

Amanda sat pertly on a tall crate that had previously contained Test's drum set, swinging her legs back and forth and smiling brightly every other minute to consciously deepen her dimples. Gathered around her were at least half a dozen of Steph's male wrestlers, hanging on to every word Amanda spoke. To her left, Christian gently held her hand because supposedly her little finger had gotten strained from too many dance rehearsals, while in front of her, Randy was in the process of taking off his shirt upon Amanda's request that little old her might get a glimpse at his abs of steel. To Amanda's right, Sylvan and René were none-too-subtly jostling with each other for the seat closest to the Verbena vixen, and a few feet away, Jeff was so entranced by the way her bristly black lashes fluttered coyly in his direction that he forgot to watch what he was doing and ended up painting a long, diagonal glow-in-the-dark blue band right across a loudly protesting Shannon's butt.
"How very nice of you to hold my hand, Mr. Peep--despite being Canadian, you demonstrate true Southern chivalry," Amanda was flirting loudly from her seat, adding, "And I ought to know about Southern chivalry, after all; don't you go believing Caitlin when she tells you I'm actually a Yankee--ugh, as if! In truth, my father's ancestors were all Georgian plantation owners during the days of the ant--anta--anteball--"
"Antebellum?" Jeff guessed, and the rest of Amanda's little entourage looked shocked that Mr. Skittles actually knew such a big word existed, let alone was able to pronounce it. Jeff glanced around at all the eyeballs fastened on him, muttering in clear annoyance, "What? I'm from the South also, remember? Give me some time and I'll learn to play "Dixie" on my guitar for you all!"
"Anyway!" Amanda cleared her throat loudly, unable to endure a conversation that wasn't focused entirely on her. "As I was saying, for a Southern belle like me, it's no trouble at all to identify signs of Southern chivalry in all of you, and--Wow! Randy, you must work out a lot, those abs are even better than Janet Jackson's!" Randy uncertainly lowered his shirt, frowning and mumbling, "Gee, thanks...I think." Turning to Sylvan beside him, the third-generation Superstar whispered loudly, "Was that a compliment or an insult?"
"Insult," Sylvan whispered back, at the same time that Christian piped up loudly, "Ooh, that was definitely a compliment! I mean, have either of you peeps seen Janet's abs?"

Everyone turned to stare at him, but as Christian started to blush bright pink and Amanda began to sulk that once again, the limelight had been stolen from her, Stephanie walked up to the group, with the rest of Verbena at her heels.
"Well, I see we've all gotten acquainted here," the youngest McMahon drawled sarcastically, while somewhere behind her, Caitlin tried to stop Kyrie from tripping up to a glow-in-the-dark Shannon and make a fool out of herself in front of him. "Now, if only the other two bands will just arrive already--"

Just as Stephanie started to get herself all worked up again, Edge came running over to her, speaking urgently, "Stephanie, I've just gotten off the phone with the representatives of the two final acts on this tour." Stephanie turned around, replying, "About time! Go on."
"Well, Urban Trash will be here shortly," the tall Canadian began, looking somewhat apprehensive while running a hand through his long blonde hair. "Their flight was delayed due to a little "incident" onboard, but their bassist--that Anus guy--has told me to assure you that the band will definitely be here no later than midnight." Stephanie sighed, deciding that she didn't even want to know what that little "incident" involving Urban Trash might be. Just as long as they get here, I don't care if they set fire to their hair and had to be airlifted to the nearest county hospital, she thought darkly to herself. That still left one last band unaccounted for, and Vinyl Act's supposed headliners at that.
"What about Scarlet Rage?" Stephanie asked, as an uncomfortable expression began creeping up Edge's features.
"Yeah, um, about them." He cleared his throat. "Scarlet Rage--all five of them--are currently sitting in a Los Angeles jail right now. Apparently, they've been charged with a massive list of legal offenses, including but not limited to speeding, erratic driving, failure to wear seatbelts while in a moving vehicle, transporting an illegal substance, defamation, sexual harassment, and assaulting a police officer. But I'm sure they've already posted bail as we speak, Steph."