Raw Is War

July 26th 1999

Part 1

I was in charge of the WWF, effective immediately. With that knowledge, the fact that I had made it through Monday without being physically sick, so far at least, was not just a mystery to me, frankly it was a miracle. I wasn't sure exactly what the hell had gone on in the board meeting back at the office earlier that morning, but I sure knew the outcome. I had heard of people making rash decisions in times of crisis before, but there were rash decisions and then there was pure insanity. This was definitely pure insanity. What on Earth made those guys, and my mom, think that I was ready for the kind of responsibility that they had thrown at me out of the blue?

Responsibility wasn't the only thing that they had thrown at me out of the blue either. The three guys sitting in the meeting room with me had been thrown at me too. It was bad enough having to hide away here in the back of the arena where none of the other wrestlers would see me, but having to do so with these three guys, two of whom were almost complete strangers, made the whole thing even more awkward, which was quite an achievement.

The whole mess was my dad's fault, the stupid asshole. If he hadn't gotten absorbed into the ridiculous hatred and rivalry with Stone Cold Steve Austin, none this would have been happening. I'd have been working my job in accounts back at the office, and dad would have been at the arena running the show, but no, that had all changed now.

My idiot brother Shane wasn't blameless either, far from it in fact. Neither was The Undertaker. After all, it was The Undertaker who had gone and lost the first blood match to Austin the previous night at Fully Loaded. That loss had cost my dad his job. What kind of moron did he actually have to be to put everything on the line like that?

When I'd watched the ending of that match and seen The Undertaker lose, I had naturally assumed that Shane would be left to take charge of the company, but apparently the board, in their infinite wisdom, had a much better idea. It would be a much better idea to have someone who had only worked for the company for a year to do it, obviously. True, I had grown up around wrestlers all my life, but that was hardly the same thing as running the damn company.

"Don't worry, Steph," Mom had told me on the phone, like it was actually possible for me not to worry in the situation that I had been put in. "We're going to assign you three guys for protection. The Union. They'll be sure to keep you protected from The Undertaker and his Ministry, as well as from Steve Austin." The Union consisted of Ken Shamrock, Big Show and Test. I knew Kenny, and he had come to my aid in the past, but the guy was hardly stable. Big Show was built like an oak tree and seemed about as intelligent as one, and I knew nothing about Test at all. He was a big guy with a Canadian accent. That was the extent of my knowledge.

"Forgive me for not jumping for joy." That's what I should have said, but my head was spinning so much that I just found myself going along with it. There wasn't actually a choice for me anyway. Being a McMahon meant that the WWF ran your life at least as much as you could run it as a company. It was a totally shit situation, but regardless, it was the situation that I was in.

Of course, my mom had one more surprise for me before she ended the phone call from the office. "We've been trying to call Shane with the decision," she had told me. "We've been trying all morning, but his cell phone is off. He's probably somewhere with the rest of the Ministry. You're going to have to go out to the ring and tell him face to face."

"Thanks mom. What should I do after that? Drink a bottle of bleach? Shit in my hands and clap, maybe?" Again, I couldn't actually say that.

"Show's started," Test pointed out, startling me as he broke the heavy silence in the room.

I looked back at him blankly. I knew that I had to get out onto the stage to speak to Shane, but making myself actually do it seemed to be hard to do. "Come on then," I ordered them a moment later, sighing as I stood up. "I know for a fact that Shane and that bunch of freaks he spends his time with will be the first ones out there tonight." My three bodyguards, if that's what they were supposed to be, followed me out of the room and along several hallways as we headed for the Gorilla position.

My mind had wandered onto how I was actually going to break the news to Shane, but I quickly snapped back to reality when I saw Steve Austin in front of me, pacing around like a caged animal. Steve saw me at almost the same time that I saw him. There was a special look that Steve got in his eyes whenever he encountered anyone with the name McMahon, even me. He had the WWF title belt in his right hand, a fact that probably pissed my dad off as much as losing his job with his own company. It pissed me off too. The bottom line, as Steve would like to say, was that I was a McMahon, and that meant that Steve Austin was the enemy, regardless of the issues I had with my dad. Blood was thicker than water. One thing I had already decided earlier in the day, after finding out that I was taking charge, was that I didn't want Austin to be the WWF champion. My WWF champion. No, I had Triple H in mind for that role. I'd previously gotten to spend some brief periods of time with Hunter, but only because he was part of dad's Corporation team. There was something about him that drove me wild inside. All I had to do was look at him. He was what I considered to be the definition of what the perfect man would look like, and he also had just the kind of sense of humor that I liked. I was sure that I'd picked up on something from Hunter too. I thought that he found me attractive, but there was a problem. Hunter had some kind of relationship going on with Chyna. These were all things that I needed to think about at another time.

"Steve," I nervously greeted the current champion as I approached him.

"What are you doing here, and why are you with these guys?" Steve demanded. A fairly typical greeting by his standards.

"Uh, they're my bodyguards, I guess you could say." Very deliberately, I had only answered one of his two questions.

"The hell do you need bodyguards for?" Steve asked gruffly. "The only one who ever did anything to you around here was your old man, and his ass is gone."

It was a good point, honestly. The only time I had actually felt in danger during my time with the WWF was when I had been abducted by The Undertaker, and it had turned out that my dad had been behind faking that whole thing, not that the asshole took the trouble to inform me that it was going to happen, or that it was fake. Bastard.

"We're here to keep it that way," Shamrock told Steve, and the two men stared each other down for a long moment.

"Why are you here?" Steve asked me again, although his eyes were still locked with Ken's.

"You'll find out in a minute, along with everyone else," I assured him. "Hell, you'll probably find it amusing." It was actually true. Steve would find it very amusing to see Shane be denied the position of power that everyone assumed was going to be his. The reality was that Steve wouldn't be benefitting much from it, but he didn't know that. Yet.

"Ain't much a McMahon's gonna say that's gonna amuse Steve Austin none."

As I walked away, I wondered if that sentence actually qualified as English. My three guys managed to make it past Steve without any punches being thrown, and we walked into Gorilla. As we did so, Kevin Dunn, the show's producer, looked up at me and raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Steph? What are you doing here?"

"Right now? Going out on the stage. Play my music please." I could hear that, just as I had suspected, Shane was out in the ring, running his mouth about who knew what. Austin had probably been contemplating running out there to try and kick his face in, even with the whole Ministry in the ring.

"Uh, you don't have any," Kevin faltered as I picked a microphone up from the table.

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath in frustration. Kevin was right. I'd never even made an entrance by myself before, and now I was the boss. The whole thing was so far beyond ridiculous. "Well, play my dad's music then, I don't know. I'm the boss now, so I guess it works."

"You're what?" Kevin asked, sounding like he was unsure whether I was on drugs, or if someone might have put some in his coffee.

"You heard the lady," Ken said, taking a threatening step towards Kevin. "Play the fucking music while your fingers still work."

"Really?" I sighed, looking at Ken with a look of distaste on my face. "Is there any need for that?"

"Woah! Wait a minute!" Kevin said loudly, looking down at his monitor.

I could hear that the noise of the crowd had risen too. I walked around and looked over Kevin's shoulder at the monitor. "Oh!" I exclaimed in a mixture of surprise and horror. The Ministry were beating the hell out of Shane in the ring. We might not have spoken since the abduction thing, but Shane was still my brother and I didn't want him to get hurt, not too badly anyway. A bit of a kicking might serve to put him in his place, but I didn't want him to end up in the hospital. I had no idea why his own team were attacking him, and there was no time to think about it.

"Get out there!" I ordered my three team members. Team members sounded much better than bodyguards. I guessed that I was now the leader of The Union, as well as the boss of the WWF.

"What?" Test asked, looking back at me with a dumbstruck look on his face.

If I was ever going to lead a locker room full of wrestlers, I wasn't going to do it by being timid, my dad had taught me that at least. "I said get out there!" I barked at the three men in front me and pointed at the curtain. "Get them away from my brother! Now!"

Typically, Kenny seemed to relish the chance to get involved in some violence, and he rushed through the curtain. Big Show and Test might not have been as convinced about following my order, but they jogged after Kenny anyway. I watched on the monitor as my three guys rushed the ring, with the crowd going wild in support of them. By this point, the Ministry members were already scattering and leaving through the crowd. Shane had been pretty well beaten, but I had a feeling that I was about to hurt him a lot more with the news that I had for him.

Shaking my head at the absurdity of it, I made my way through the curtain without even thinking about not having any music playing to announce my arrival. It really didn't matter right now. I had only been out in the ring a few times, and it was still daunting to be in front of so many people. At least they weren't barraging me with abuse like they always did with dad and Shane every week. I was sure that would change pretty quick when they found out that I intended to push Triple H for the title, given that they thought he was one of the biggest assholes in the company. Hunter had won a match the previous night to earn himself the number one contendership, so half of the battle was already over with.

During my walk down the entrance ramp I actually got almost no reaction at all, which led me to assume that the crowd were simply confused as to why I would be there. I did hear some whistles, presumably from sex starved teenagers. I got in the ring and walked over to Shane, who had just managed to get back to his feet. My three team members moved over to stand behind me, out of the way, but at the same time plenty close enough. Shane's suit and shirt were a mess, and he was holding a hand up to the side of his face, presumably due to a punch that he had taken from someone. "Steph?" He asked, squinting at me as though he couldn't see properly or something. I figured that he must have been knocked half senseless. "What are you doing here?" He asked me.

Silently cursing my mom and the board of directors, I raised my microphone. I had to make the announcement publicly, for obvious reasons. "Shane, I uh, there was a board meeting today, this morning. They had to discuss what happen last night, with dad. With dad gone, they had to decide who was going to take over running the company." I was finding this really difficult, and I found myself holding up a hand almost defensively. "I expected it to be you. It should have been you."

"What are you talking about?" Shane asked, slighly more alert now. "It is me."

"No," I sighed, "It's not you. It's me." The crowd loved that, and cheered loudly, which only made things worse.

"You?" Shane asked incredulously.

"Me," I nodded. I tried to reach out and touch Shane in some kind of weak attempt to comfort him and soften the blow, but to my surprise he angrily brushed my arm away and started storming across the ring, trying to leave. I knew that he was hurting, but I wanted us to at least talk about it.

"Shane, just wait," I tried again, grabbing onto his arm to stop him from leaving. This time he shoved me off him even more aggressively, causing me to stumble backwards and fall on my ass. I wasn't hurt, I had just lost my balance. It was embarrassing more than anything, but Big Show, who was closest to Shane, didn't know that. Shane was lucky that he was so quick, because he only just managed to dodge past the giant of a man and roll out of the ring.

Test walked over and offered me his hand, which I used to help me get back up. That was when I heard Shane yelling at me from halfway up the entrance ramp. "That's it! I'm done! I'm done with all of it! I'm done with dad! I'm done with the Ministry! And I'm done with you, you bitch!" With that outburst, Shane turned and stormed up the ramp, heading for the back.

Quickly, I set off after him, but by the time I made it down the ring steps he had already disappeared. Kenny rolled out of the ring in front of me. "Leave him, Steph. Let him go."

"Don't tell me what to do," I blustered at him as I barged past and started up the ramp. Kenny, Test and Big Show fell in behind, and we all set off after Shane.

We rushed through the arena as fast we could, so it only took us a couple of minutes for us to reach the parking garage. I knew that was where Shane had been heading because he obviously intended to leave. When we charged into the parking garage, Shane was just opening the door to get into the limo that I had arrived in. "Shane! Wait!" I yelled, hurrying towards him.

"You want to run the damn company?" He yelled back. "Go ahead! Run it into the ground for all I care! That's exactly what you'll end up doing!" With that he got into the limo and slammed the door closed. The car sped away with a slight screech of its tyres just as I reached it.

I stood there with my eyes closed and my fists clenched, wanting to scream something obscene in frustration. "What now?" Test asked from behind me.

"How the hell should I know?" I barked as I turned and glared at him.