"We couldn't find a cleaner part of the city to ride around in?" Shane McMahon leaned back against the seat of the limousine and sighed. He turned his head to stare out the window as they passed through the streets of Chicago. "I can't believe we're here before we have to be. Look at this place. It's…"

"Disgusting, Shane, yes I know." Stephanie rolled her eyes and looked around the car. Randy and Stacy sat between her and Shane. Trish and Dave sat across from them, with enough space between them that both of their hands could fit beside either of their legs without touching. "But, we're here for a reason."

"A reason that involves everyone in this car." Shane turned away from the streets and let his eyes fall on Randy. "Hunter and Ric have an appearance and we're all crashing it."

Trish took her eyes away from their momentary train on Dave's hand and looked up with wild eyes. There were plenty of things for her to be worried about after leaving the hotel, just barely making the flight out. She didn't know how Randy and Dave would react to one another, and while they were nowhere near as comfortable and friendly as they had once been in Evolution, they had at least not started fighting. There were also no snide comments from Stephanie about Dave's transformation into a McMahon sympathizer, something that Trish had expected to start the moment she got in the car. However, she was not expecting Shane to start changing the plan. Especially when he changed it without consulting her first.

"What do you mean, we're all crashing it?" Trish sat up and the motion moved her closer to Dave. "We can't all crash it because we're not supposed to be on the same team, remember? Or are you changing the plan? Decided to go McMahon and take over something that was less than half your idea in the first place?"

"Don't start, Trish, alright?" Shane groaned and rolled her head back and forth on the seat. "The plan's not changing. Nobody is going to know anything until Wrestlemania. But that doesn't mean that we can't all end up at the same place. Everybody knows that Hunter and Ric have this signing. Everybody also knows that he crashed your appearance a couple of weeks ago."

"And where does Randy come into it? How does he just happen to know what we're planning to do, huh? People are gonna start speculating, and we need explanations."

"Well, if you would let me finish, maybe I could get that explanation out."

Trish narrowed her eyes at him and sat back against the seat. She'd spent too long out of the realm of McMahon contact. When she first teamed with Shane and Stephanie, Trish had forced herself to get along with them. She forced herself to let go of old grudges and bitterness. She forced herself to control her own temper, which wasn't too far off from theirs, so that they wouldn't butt heads. Time away from them had managed to break down the wall she'd built around her darkest emotions to co-exist with them.

Spending time with Dave hadn't helped much, either. Despite his aggressive attitude in the ring, when they were alone, he was pretty much non-confrontational. They didn't have arguments as much as statements. She said her peace. He said his peace. Then the whole thing disappeared for a few days. That didn't help prepare herself to go back into the head-butting arena with Shane and Stephanie McMahon.

"Look," Stephanie said, leaning forward, "everybody knows we're keeping tabs on where you are. We're destroying you, and we're going to take every opportunity to do that. You guys go in to crash the party, then a few minutes later, Stacy and Randy go in and the fight goes from there."

"It's easy for Trish and Stacy." The first words Dave had said the entire ride through the streets of Chicago were low and even. Heads turned towards him and he leaned back. Slowly, his hand rose, and he took his sunglasses off. He took a long look at the lenses, then lowered his hands to his side. He brushed against Trish, but she stayed still, keeping her face as even as everyone else's. "Randy and me… that's gonna be something entirely different."

Trish looked at Shane and wondered what he was thinking. He had taken the lead in the conversation, and he was enough like his father for him to not care for his ideas to be questioned. There was too much at stake for him to take offense at something that Dave did, and if necessary, she would jump in and do what she could to salvage the situation. Trish sighed with relief, though, as Shane said, "Go on."

"Randy's not coming in to save Hunter's ass, so much as to make sure I don't get what I want. Now, we're supposed to be the babyfaces in this whole thing. Or at least I am. As far as anybody else is concerned, Trish is straddling the fence, but the pops from the crowd says that nobody has picked up on any of this. And let's get this straight. I picked up on the whole thing by a week after the Rumble, which means they're all morons."

"Yeah." Randy leaned forward, as though he were taking Dave's easy open into the conversation as one of his own. "We've known they were idiots for years, but you do have a point. They could buy this as retaliation for you, since Hunter's been going after you non-stop. And they'll buy me attacking you. But in the end, we've gotta both end up on Hunter and in everybody else's eyes, we're way too far apart to be doing the whole enemy of my enemy deal."

"So, you pretend that you don't realize that you're both fighting Hunter, then when you do pick up on it, go back to fighting each other."

Trish looked at Stacy and nodded. There were times when she'd noticed that she had more brains than most gave her credit for, but she hadn't been sure how Stacy had gotten along in the regime's meetings. Trish hadn't been able to sneak away to very many, and those few times when they were all in a group, Stacy had sat quietly, listening to everything. Her comment made Trish think that Stacy hadn't been listening as much as coming up with her own ideas and waiting for the time to unleash them.

"And we've got to keep Ric out of the fight," Trish said. She leaned back and her shoulder bumped Dave's. She didn't jump, but she moved over a little so as not to touch him. No matter what they did once they were alone, she was insistent that they wouldn't show any kind of intimacy in public until after Wrestlemania. "So, Stacy, when you go at me, make sure Ric is right there. Close enough that pushing me bumps him and we can just fight around him. He's not going to try to pull us apart, but we can still keep him in the middle of everything. Keep him far enough away that Hunter's definitely on his own."

"So, it's settled," Stephanie said. She looked at Trish and Dave. "You two will make your move when there's about ten minutes left to go. Then, we wait a couple of minutes and send in Randy and Stacy."

The car stopped and Shane said, "We'll knock him down a peg and end his little nice-nice time early. He talks a good game, but he won't really care. He'll be more pissed off that you broke into his time to be drooled over than that he was actually pulled away from his fans." He looked out the window as the car started moving and they backed into an alley. "Get this done so we can get the hell out of here. I don't want to see this place again until Wrestlemania."

"Randy, we'll come and get you and Stacy when security is taking you out of the building." Stephanie sighed and looked across from her. "You two… they're not going to call the police, but if they think the fight's going to start again, they'll hold you until you calm down. So when you're outside, do some yelling, then jump in the car and get out of there, alright?"

"We got it." Dave opened the door, then took a last look around. "And, by the way, be a little more secretive with your meetings around arenas. The people in the crowd may be stupid as hell, but everybody backstage isn't. There are only so many run-ins you can have that doesn't involve fighting before somebody else catches on."

"Don't worry about it," Randy told him with a smirk. "I can toss a good punch your way. All in the name of making it look real, of course."

Dave snorted a laugh. "Of course." He took Trish's hand and after stepping outside, pulled her out, too. He closed the door and watched as the limousine slowly pulled away. When it was gone, he turned his head down to Trish. "How much time before we crash the party?"

She looked down at her watch and shrugged. "A couple of hours or so. Why? What do you have in mind?"

His grin was just sinister enough for Trish to get a chill. Heat grew in his eyes and it was enough to make her shiver. Dave winked and put his sunglasses back on. "Making up for lost time."

"Uh uh." Trish shook her head. "I'm not going to some cheap ass, by the hour motel and we're out of this town the second our little mission is over." She snorted a laugh and patted him on the chest. "Save it for the plane, big man. We have a hotel waiting for us in California, so save it up for that."

Dave laughed and Trish was almost sure that he was rolling his eyes beneath his sunglasses. She shook her head and turned, leading him back towards the car. As tense as she had been with the watching eyes of Shane and Stephanie on her, she was able to relax when they were gone. She'd come into the situation wanting a champion and when it was over, she'd have him in more ways than she could fathom. It was time for her to get what she wanted, and once Wrestlemania was over, she would have exactly that, and no amount of McMahon taunting was going to stop her from having a good time with her very own Animal. Once it was all over.