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I love all of the people who review, who message me, who even just flip through this absentmindedly and don't do anything (because I have been that person, I know they exist), and I would like to thank all of you. Infinite thanks go out to everyone who has inspired me to write this story, or any others.
Please, enjoy this chapter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next night, at the taping for WWE Friday Night SmackDown, Maria Kanellis stood in front of a mirror in the locker room that had been designated only for herself, Trish, and the other reinstated girls. Ashley and Lita were absent due to their appearance on RAW, but would be meeting up with the rest of the girls on Wednesday.
Trish stood behind Maria, adjusting her outfit, while everyone else lounged around the locker room and waited for the match to begin.
Normally, Maria would have been dressed in a pair of skin-tight pants and a top that was practically like a bra, as always, with a set of gloves that barely covered any of her hands, let alone that served a purpose in her match. Now, however, standing in front of the mirror, she wore an UnderArmour tank top with a sports bra underneath it, and no gloves on her hands. Her normally manicured fingers were free of any polish except for the clear coat Candice had insisted on applying, and her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, tight.
In retrospect, she figured out that she looked like she was going to the gym to work out… but it wasn't going to be quite as difficult as working out to beat Alicia Fox in a match.
When Maria had initially been in the business, before she had left and all of that, Maria could only remember speaking to Alicia on a few occasions, but she was sure they'd spoken plenty of times. Alicia had taken the mean-girl persona she still carried with her at the time, however, a bit too far, and then took the nice-girl persona too far after that, when she realized she had been being a massive bitch and that was why nobody liked her.
Maria never understood the girls who changed their personalities like they changed their damn underwear, so when Alicia did that, Maria didn't bother trying to keep in contact with her after she left the company.
"I like the idea of putting the mesh UnderArmour on over," Candice commented as she filed her nails down, laying across one of the couches with her legs across Victoria's lap. "It looks nice. The lime green up top contrasts with the white underneath and the black glitter pants on the bottom, without it being too much."
Mickie James had a bag of Dum-Dum suckers sitting on the vanity next to her, and smiled at Maria as she pulled out a strawberry-flavored one. "Do you want one before you go on? They help me ease my stomach before I go out there."
"I'll pass for now." Maria thought about it for a second and then shrugged, holding her hand out anyway. "Actually, I think I'll have Trish hold on to it, and I'll take it after the match."
Mickie had unwrapped the strawberry one and popped it into her mouth, but handed Maria a root beer float-flavored one. Maria passed this off to Trish to put into the pocket of her pants, and then turned back to the mirror to pat down any stray hairs.
Trish laughed a bit as she looked over at Maria. "You know, I almost like the idea that you're going with the red hair, even though you don't actually have to… but then again, I'm sure it's a great way to get the attention that you deserve, so… good for you." Trish picked up a brush from next to Mickie and moved Maria over a bit in the mirror to brush her hair out.
Victoria smiled, and Candice looked over at her as she attempted to adjust the way she was sitting on the couch, so she stopped. "Don't worry about that sort of stuff, Trish. We've all got something fun going with our hair. We're standouts here. Candice has hers cut to that ungodly short length, I've got my red highlights, Mickie's got the light blonde highlights, you went back to brown, Maria and Lita have red, and Ashley's got her green and pink."
"Who would have ever thought that we'd all end up coming together, huh?"
"Anyone with a brain."
Maria ignored Victoria's side comment and looked over to Candice as she finished checking herself out and fixing anything she didn't like. "So, hey, where are you hiding Torrie? I thought that the three of you were inseparable? At least, for a while you guys were. Ashley mentioned you guys, sort of, when she was talking yesterday."
"Torrie didn't want to come back to the WWE right now. She told me that she was too focused on her life now to just drop everything she's accomplished since she left." Candice shrugged. "I told her that I understood where she was coming from, and besides that, she's never gotten along well with big groups of people.
Alicia Fox sat with Kelly Kelly in the Diva's locker room, located just a few minutes down the hallway of the arena in Jacksonville, Florida from the other girls. Though Kelly was excited to be in her hometown, she was definitely looking a little bit down as she sat to the side, watching Alicia finish reapplying her lip gloss.
"Damn…" Alicia spoke suddenly after a few minutes of the silence that followed. "I wish that Eve was here to see us now… we've all sort of come together. I think she'd like that."
Unlike Ashley and Lita, who were in no rush to get back to their friends because they could fend for themselves, Maryse had shuttled herself directly to SmackDown's taping with Kelly. This may or may not have been a mistake on her part, as Kelly told the French-Canadian, "I told you so," at least three times while they were on the plane.
Maryse sat across the locker room from them now, glaring at the two girls who were at least a bit happier than she was in her semi-angered state. She adjusted her nose guard slightly and then spoke. "I just can't believe this… Not only do they have the nerve to attack me, to maul me, and to ruin my beautiful face…" She shook her head, and Kelly frowned at Maryse's obsession with the nose injury she had sustained, while Ted fought laughter from his place leaning against the wall behind her. The entire way to Jacksonville he'd been comforting her though he obviously thought she was being ridiculous. "They get their own locker room, and they came here in a limo. They go everywhere in a limo!"
"Kelly, you know that I didn't mean that in a bad way, what I said about Eve…" Alicia opted to change the subject, and Maryse rolled her eyes as she continued to obsess. "If Eve was here, well… I'm not even sure. I feel like Eve would be the one going out there instead of me if she was here, because that's just the person she is, and I wouldn't want that."
Kelly shrugged her shoulders sadly, before feeling CM Punk grab hold of them and massage them lightly to try to ease her stress. "I miss Eve, too, Alicia. You know that. I miss her more than I miss any of the other girls who are out on injury right now… we're best friends, the three of us…"
"Definitely."
"Vomit."
There was another moment of silence after Maryse's comment, before Alicia sat down next to Kelly and looked her friend right in the eye. "I don't want you to come out with me to the ring this time. Not tonight, Kelly."
"What? Why not?"
"I don't know what I could do if you got hurt out there, being with me. Besides, I'll have Sheamus come down with me… I should get back in one piece."
"Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Party" started to play throughout the arena, and then out skipped Alicia Fox, smiling and waving to the crowd, blowing kisses from the stage before pushing back the fuzzy hood she wore and revealing her bright red hair with a laugh. From there, she went directly to the ring, hopping in and jumping to the second rope. Sheamus pointed up to her from where he stood at ringside, and she laughed again, jumping down and skipping to the center of the ring to face the stage and wait for her opponent.
Maria entered in almost exactly the same way she always had, except instead of blowing a kiss out to the crowd around them, she simply winked out at them. After that, she walked down to the ring, talking strategy with Trish the whole time. For some reason-which was rather obvious to Alicia later-this made Alicia feel very uneasy in her stomach, and she almost asked if she could have a break from the taping to go vomit.
She didn't-mistake number one had been made.
Maria slid effortlessly up into the ring, flipping her bright red ponytail away from her shoulders before climbing up to the second turnbuckle opposite Alicia.
Alicia knew she had to resort to a tactic that she didn't particularly enjoy using right then and there. Regardless, she rushed forward so that she was standing behind Maria, grabbing her by the red hair that had been so neatly put together before the match and pulling it, so that Maria's thin body came falling back and slammed down into the mat.
The referee motioned to the timekeeper to ring the bell as Maria kipped up to her feet, holding her ponytail and rubbing her head a bit. "Oh, you'll learn to regret that, Foxy!" She ran at Alicia then, hitting a clean clothesline on her fellow unnatural redhead and leaving her on the ground. They went back and forth for a few minutes then, Maria dominating the match, until she jumped onto Alicia and had to get pulled back and spoken to by the referee, Mike Chioda.
"What's Trish doing, Cole?" Josh asked as Trish stuck her hand into her back pocket, and then began grinding her fingers into the face of Alicia Fox.
"She's got a pair of brass knuckles!" Michael responded as Trish pulled away from Alicia, the latter girl holding her face as the former tossed the brass knuckles away from her and toward the timekeeper when she was done.
Maria picked up Alicia then, letting her regain her balance as she teased her. "Come on, Foxy! Try to hit me, just one time! Get a hit in the match!"
Alicia ran forward on drowsy feet to clothesline Maria, who ducked out of the way and then spun around to run with Alicia for a few steps before hitting her with the Beautiful Bulldog. She got a three-count of this and Trish got into the ring.
Maria threw Alicia from the ring then, into Sheamus, who managed to catch the falling body of Alicia Fox as it flew through the air. He let Alicia stand on her own and checked her for any bruises as they began their walk backstage, and Trish got Maria a microphone.
Maria stepped forward then, standing only a couple of feet away from the ropes, rolling her head on her neck as she fixed the ponytail at the crown of her head, and then held out her hand for the microphone Trish had gotten for her, as well as for the sucker, which she received after.
"The WWE doesn't care about their Divas." The people who sat in the crowd who had watched RAW shuffled their movement in their seats, hoping that Maria wouldn't just go on the same rant. "I'll cut the crap here, though, and tell you exactly what you want to hear. The juiciest part. I'll tell you the part that explains that the only reason I was put into the Diva Search was because of my looks. That's the same reason that Foxy here, and your precious Kelly Kelly, were hired, actually. It's because they were in magazines, modeling.
"So, with the knowledge that I was a pretty girl with my light brown hair, they told me to dumb myself down. They ordered me to do that. They made me act stupid, and listen, I'm not stupid. I'm one of the most intelligent people that you'd ever meet, I finished in the top 5 of Celebrity Apprentice for crying out loud! But the WWE thought that they would be putting me directly into the can-and my beautiful face, let's not forget that much-if I got to be smart on their shows. God forbid." Maria rolled her eyes and then looked at Trish, who held up her hands.
"Not my fault," she was shown saying, and Maria looked back out to the crowd.
"From there, the WWE said that I was going to be a backstage interviewer, though I had been looking for a job as a Diva. I had to interview all of these sweaty, disgusting people. They ordered me to spend my time with Santino Marella and John Cena, told me that I had to pretend to care about them, when it was obvious I didn't to anyone who really knew me. Playboy wasn't even my idea-the WWE was selling me out."
The crowd was booing loudly now, but Maria wasn't having any of that, and refused to take it. "Shut up and listen to me!" she screamed, shocking them into silence. "The WWE was wrong about me, and so were all of you. When I got into the ring, I got things done, even though I had never been trained a day in my life! None of the girls in the Diva Search were trained, unless you include Layla's prior dance experience with the Miami Heat-which I don't think any professional should."
A guitar riff interrupted Maria's speech there, and the two girls in the ring turned their attention to the stage.
The blonde almost threw them off, initially, until they noticed that it wasn't Kelly entering to this music. It was, instead, a girl who had been attacked by the group of them a week earlier on SmackDown-Natalya. The crowd cheered wildly for her, and she smiled a bit before turning her attention to Trish and Maria in the ring.
"You girls didn't get your job done last week. I'm still here, aren't I? And as long as I'm still standing, as long as I am breathing, and there is blood flowing through my veins, I will not let you take over this company!" The crowd cheered, but Trish and Maria didn't seem to care. Trish took the microphone from the redhead and stepped up to talk to Natalya.
"You and what army? All of your commanding officers are gone, what's the point in trying? Beth Phoenix, Melina, Eve Torres, Tamina, Michelle McCool, Layla… face it, little girl. You're all alone, and you shouldn't even try to stop us."
"You've been gone for a long time, Trish, and obviously, you haven't been paying attention. I'm not alone. In fact, I have WWE's young lions with me."
Let's go hit the dance floor, party all night long. Let's go cut the groove, show them we belong.
Maria raised her eyebrows and leaned her head a bit forward as she looked at Kaitlyn and AJ, who came out to stand on either side of Natalya.
"The Chickbusters against Trish and Maria, next week on SmackDown."
"Aww, Natalya, are you making matches for your little day care service now? That's so cute! But they're the ones who should be scared."
"Fine, I guess you're just too scared to fight them."
"Fine-next week, you're on."
Review/comment/message. Questions, comments, and concerns that haven't been addressed in the actual writings will be addressed in chapter 10! Thank you for reading.