A young woman wearing dressed in a cute pink outfit stood in the center of the ring. Behind her was an athletic looking blonde woman tied to a chair. Even through the cloth that bound her mouth, she was obviously terrified. Her eyes flitted around like trapped birds, looking for some way to escape from this woman who seemed to hate her for no reason.
"You remember Ashley, right? Your best friend Ashley?" Mickie James taunted someone backstage, laughing hysterically as she played with her hair which was done up in pigtails.
She smiled when she heard a womans laugh come over the sound system, and her smile was strangely innocent, considering she had a woman tied up behind her. Trish Stratus' music hit and the curvy blonde woman's champion ran to the ring, her eyes focused darting anxiously between Ashley and Mickie.
"If you come any closer I'm going to hit her." Mickie shrieked when Trish started to jump into the ring. Her voice suddenly held absolute, manic sincerity and the lovely woman's champion had no choice but to believe her capable of anything. She stopped right outside the ring and stood there, her large brown eyes desperately searching for an opportunity to save her friend.
Mickie, obviously glorying in the power she held in this situation, walked over to the ropes where Trish was standing anxiously craning her head, trying to see if Ashley was hurt. Mickie looked down at her idol with a crazed expression in her eyes.
"Don't you want to save your best friend Ashley, Trish?" Mickie's eyes whirled and sparkled crazily as she looked gloatingly over her shoulder at the bound Ashley, and Trish saw her opportunity in this moment of inattention.
While Mickie was still looking at Ashley, relishing her obvious terror, Trish grabbed Mickie's heeled boot.. She yanked it, sending Mickie tumbling out of the ring to land on the floor in a heap. Seizing her newfound advantage, Trish jumped on top of Mickie and started pummeling her with her fists.
Mickie instinctively curled up into a ball to protect herself from the other womans attack and Trish released her hold, jumping quickly into the ring. She sprinted over to the center of the canvas where Ashley was tied tightly to a chair. Desperately, she tried to untie the knots and free the helpless woman. Becoming completely engrossed in her task, she didn't notice when the still-gagged Ashley started moaning and gesturing with her head.
Trish had been too eager to get to her friend and her lack of forethought cost her. Mickie was suddenly right there, and the last thing Trish felt was her head driving into the mat in a Tornado DDT. She felt her world go dark around the edges as she passed out, her hair spreading over the canvas as she slumped nervelessly down to the floor. Mickie laughed again and walked slowly over to Trish's unconscious form.
Ashley could do nothing but watch in shocked disbelief as Mickie knelt down beside the fallen form of her former idol. Mickie's nose was still bleeding profusely from her attack and the blood dripped down onto Trish's cheek as Mickie held her head almost lovingly between her hands.
"Do you love me now, Trish Stratus?" Mickie howled insanely into Trish's blank face. She laughed once more as she bent down and pressed her full lips against Trish's slack, unresponsive mouth. She kissed her passionately then, without warning, dropped Trish carelessly to the mat. Trish lay there unable to respond, still unconscious.
Mickie threw back her head and laughed, her body convulsing with glee as she jumped energetically out of the ring. She didn't seem to feel any qualms about leaving Ashley tied helpless in the ring. She didn't even look back at her professed love as she walked towards the curtain that lead backstage.
A tall man, dressed all in black, watched the whole scene from the shadows just behind that same curtain. He was standing perfectly still and if you didn't know he was there, you wouldn't have been able to see him. His arms were crossed across his broad chest and his green eyes gleamed in his otherwise impassive face as he watched Mickie walk up the aisle towards him. Very few people would have known how to read the expression on his face, because to most people it would seem that he had no expression. But if you looked in his eyes, you could see something flickering slightly in their depths. Something that seemed very close to approval.
He watched her as she pulled open the curtain, making no move to show her that he was there. Her cheeks were glowing and her chest was heaving with her excited breath. When she moved past him she was practically bouncing as she walked, obviously still energized from the scene she had initiated with Trish in the ring. She was completely oblivious of his eyes on her as she walked down the hall and into her dressing room, closing the door behind her.
It wasn't long after that that a stagehand, innocently adjusting the set, received a nasty scare when a patch of darkness removed itself from the rest of the shadows and became a man. His startled gasp earned him a hard, glittering look and he suddenly remembered urgent business that he had to do elsewhere. Anywhere but here.
The man in black ignored the stagehand scampering off, turning his head slowly towards Mickie's dressing room, where she had disappeared moments ago. His boots were silent as he began to move towards her closed door.
* * * * *
Mickie bustled around her dressing room, her face still lit up with the same strangely child-like and beatific smile she had worn in the ring. She was humming Trish's music as she sat down at a vanity-table and removed the elastics that held her hair in pigtails. She picked up a brush and started working it through the tangles that had been created in her hair during her tussle with Trish.
In her mirror she could clearly see the room behind her, and as she was gazing dreamily at her own reflection, the door right behind her swung slowly open.
At first she was worried that it was Trish or even Ashley come for revenge, but she could see the whole room reflected in her mirror and soon realized that no one could be in the room with her. It was not a large room and the door was set dead center in the mirror. There would be no way for anyone to sneak up on her. She laughed self-mockingly at her own jumpiness and went back to brushing out her hair.
The floor behind her creaked slightly. Still nervous, Mickie whirled around, her body moving so fast that her hair flung out in a semi-circle around her head.
A man was standing right behind her. It was impossible for anyone to have entered the room without her knowing but he was still there. Her first impression of him was one of blackness and large green eyes.
He looked familiar to her, although it took her awhile to figure out who he was. One of the
SmackDown
wrestlers, she thought. Mickie didn't pay much attention to
SmackDown
because Trish was on Raw, but she realized that she had seen this man before. Everyone had. He had been around for years.
It was the Undertaker. Towering over her seated form, clad in black leather, she had to admit he was intimidating. His hair, flowing down over his shoulders and down his back, gave the impression of darkness but the light caught it and flared within it redly. She thought she could have dealt with all of these things, with his size and obvious strength, but she lost her composure when she saw his eyes staring down at her. She found herself unable to speak, probably for the first time in her life.
Fighting off her fear with limited success, she got unsteadily to her feet with the vague thought that he wouldn't seem so enormous if she wasn't sitting. Even standing, he towered more than a foot over her.
He stood and stared down at her, showing no sign of telling her why he had invaded her room. She realized suddenly that she didn't know anything about him. Although she rarely paid attention, she knew the other wrestlers chatted incessantly about their families, but Undertaker never took part in any of those discussions. Actually, now that she thought about it, he was rarely seen outside of his infrequent appearances on
SmackDown
.
He seemed to take his wrestling character overly seriously though. She had always believed that his persona was just an act, but the way he stood with his arms over his chest, staring at her, was too much. He showed no sign of even the slightest break in character. And then there was the fact that he hadn't appeared in her mirror which she didn't really want to think about too much.
She shook the thought away. Crossing her own arms she tried to glare at him, although she knew the effect was spoiled by her having to look up at him to do it. When he finally spoke she jumped, hating herself for doing so.
"Congratulations." His voice was rough and dark, and she had the sudden and completely irrelevant thought that it suited him.
Mickie nodded at him a little uncertainly.
"For what?" She was happy to note that her voice showed none of her unease, sounding just as bouncy and confident as ever.
Still, Mickie was unable to ignore her breath catching in her throat as the Undertaker stepped even closer to her. The denim of her short skirt actually brushed against the black leather of his long coat. This close she could smell him. Irrelevantly, she noticed that he smelled like masculine musk.
Sometime while she was musing he had started talking. She shook her head, berating herself for daydreaming with such a dangerous and unpredictable man in her dressing room. She didn't know a lot about him but she did know that he was not someone to take lightly.