Chapter #7Get Hype for the Hippo by: mrsadsack   "Dominique."
Gloria ordered Marc to carry her purse for her and Marc grunted in strain as he grabbed it off the table. It weighed a ton. He ended up carrying it by wrapping the spaghetti string around his chest and wearing it it like a backpack.
"The match may not be survival, but maybe me and every assistant in the ASL will get lucky and these two will end up killing each other anyway," Marc thought as he struggled to keep up with Gloria as she walked down the hall.
When they got to the conference center minutes later, the place was packed with reporters and fans. Dominique was seated at the table, and a cat anthro was waiting at the door. She was slender, unlike most anthros Marc had seen around the ASL, but at eleven-feet-tall she was almost double his height. She had black fur, blue hair in a bun, and a purple business suit and skirt. She wore rectangular glasses and had gold eyes. Her name was Penelope Pierce and she was Gloria's agent. Actually, she was Dominique's agent too. In fact, most of the ASL's most popular fighters were represented by her. She didn't look happy.
"You're late," she snapped at Gloria.
Marc was impressed at her bravery since the gator towered over her and could snap her in half with a single bite of her jaws. Gloria wasn't mad though. For the first time since Marc had met her, the gator looked friendly.
"Fashionably late, darling. The better to get the crowd's attention."
"Dominique isn't happy."
Gloria laughed like a noblewoman from a cartoon. "When is she ever?"
At the sound of her laugh, the reporters and fans noticed her. Cameras flashed as they took her picture, and Gloria's fans--mostly drooling men, human and anthro both--began cheering, the closest begging her for autographs. To Marc's complete surprise, Gloria obliged them, signing autographs and making pleasant small-talk with her fans. "Of course she treats her fans well," Marc thought. "She wants their worship. If only they spent a couple minutes alone with her, then see how she treats them."
The other reason Gloria was spending so much time with her fans became clear when Marc got a look at Dominique's face. The hippo was not happy. She'd been kept waiting once, and now she was forced to wait again. Dominique's own fans didn't take the blatant disrespect well either. They all had a kind of grunge/punk/goth look and were mostly made up of anthro men and women, and a few human women. Marc had heard about Dominique's hatred of human men and her fans apparently shared her prejudice. When they saw Marc standing behind Gloria, they put two and two together and began insulting and threatening him too.
"You think you can mock Dominique, runt?!" "Why don't you and your lizard go to hell?" "Come here, twerp, I haven't eaten yet!" "Go against the Dom and she'll turn you into a stain!"
Marc groaned internally. "Well, it's not like I'm here to make friends."
After five minutes of Gloria deliberately stalling, Dominique got up and slammed her fist on the table, breaking it in half. "WILL YOU GET UP HERE?!"
Gloria looked at her like she hadn't even noticed her. "Oh, so sorry, Dominique. I completely forgot you were there."
"Don't mess with me!" the hippo growled.
Ms. Pierce gave Gloria a pointed look and the gator sighed. She took her purse from Marc and muttered under her breath, "Stand up straight and don't move. Don't embarrass me either."
Marc glared at her as she approached the stage. One of Gloria's fans, a human man who'd gotten a selfie with Gloria, leaned over and spoke to you.
"You must be so happy to be working for the Glamor Gator!"
"It's freaking heaven on earth," Marc grumbled.
Employees hauled in a new table and Ms. Pierce grabbed a microphone.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We apologize for the slight delay, but we'd like to welcome everyone to today's conference. Today we'll be talking about tomorrow's match. This is the big one. The one you've all been waiting for. The fight between Dominique and Gloria!"
The crowd erupted into cheers and rival chants, one side saying, "GO DOM! GO DOM!" and the other, "GLAMOR GATOR! GLAMOR GATOR!"
Ms. Pierce detailed the specifics of tomorrow night's match, hyping up the long build-up between the first ever fight between Gloria and Dominique. She then allowed questions from the press, and said fan questions would follow. Whenever Dominique answered a question, she would pepper her answer with threats of violence, mentions of how no opponent could defeat her, and, if the person questioning her was a human man, she would work take their question, no matter how innocuous, as a personal attack and promised them pain and suffering in return. Eventually they stopped throwing her questions.
Gloria acted the opposite. Whenever asked a question she would respond articulately and cordially, as if she was flattered to be asked a question at all. She turned on the charm, fawning over those who asked her anything, usually making them blush in response. She was clearly trying to buy the fans' and reporters' adulation. It was enough to make Marc roll his eyes. He crossed his arms impatiently, just waiting for the entire thing to be over with.
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