The cover image for this story was made by Val, an incredibly talented friend of mine. You can see more of her work by following her on Twitter. Her handle is nowthisiswwe. I'm eternally grateful to her, so if you guys could give her a follow I would appreciate it.
June 2027
At 9am precisely, Bayley Martinez walked into the outer office of WWE Chairman Hunter Helmsley. She was dressed for business in a light grey dress. Such a formal appearance wasn't her kind of thing, but it was necessary when she was summoned to HQ to see the boss. As the senior female trainer at WWE's Performance Center, it was something that happened several times a year, when she was required to report on her understudies, some of them already competing on the NXT roster, others having not yet made it that far.
Quite frankly, in her opinion, these meetings were not needed. They never lasted very long, and the content of them could just as easily be conducted over a video call. But Hunter had his own way of working, and speaking to all of his senior employees face to face on at least a semi-regular basis was one of them. She supposed that made sense, now that she thought about it.
"Good morning," Mr Helmsley's receptionst said politely as Bayley walked in.
"Good morning. I'm here to see the boss. I'm just about on time, I think."
The receptionist smiled and gestured towards Hunter's open door. "You are, and you can go right in."
"Thank you." Bayley walked over to the office and saw Hunter sitting behind his desk, making notes on some kind of document. With a hint of a smile, Bayley wondered if the silver pen he was using was worth more or less than her car. His watch was definitely worth more. Shaking off such materialistic thoughts, she knocked lightly on the open door to announce her presense.
Hunter looked up and greeted her with a smile. "Morning, Bayley. Come in and have a seat. I'll be with you in a second."
"Morning, Hunter. How are you?" Bayley asked as she walked over and sat down on one of the two chairs in front of the desk.
"Good, thank you. And you?" he asked, attention now back on making notes.
"Great, thanks," Bayley smiled, not that he saw it. While she waited, she shuffled through the reports that she had brought with her. Her new assistant down in Florida had compiled them for her, in a much more streamlined manner than she had presented them herself in the past. She hoped that Hunter would agree when she gave him his copies. Each sheet had a picture of the wrestler in question, followed by a brief bio, a summary of their progress in training, and lastly some bullet points for both their strengths and weaknesses.
Eventually, Hunter reached the bottom of the page he had been working on and set the doment aside. "Sorry about that," he said when he looked at Bayley. "I didn't want to lose my train of thought."
"No problem," Bayley said, for want of anything else. She held out his copies of the reports. "I brought reports on all of the girls. My new assistant put them together for me. I hope you like the new style."
Hunter took them, set all but the top one down on the desk, then studied the one in his hand for a minute without comment. "Good," was his verdict when he finally spoke. "Can you get me a set of these once a month from now on?"
"Sure," Bayley agreed, glad that she had someone else to handle the admin for her.
"Might as well start with this one," Hunter said, branishing the report in his hand. "Amy Morgan. You've put here that she is progressing surprisingly well, particularly with her mat wrestling. Surprisingly?" he enquired with a slightly raised eyebrow.
"Surprisingly is fair, I think," Bayley said studiously. "I think we both know Amy was a bit of a punt on your part when you signed her."
"Yeah, you could say that," Hunter conceded. "She had done some training with Paige and her mother, and Paige personally asked me to give her a shot."
"Right," Bayley nodded. Apparently neither of them were going to mention that Amy was a stunningly beautiful former lingerie model. It didn't take much cynicism to start wondering if her looks had pushed Hunter across the line towards signing her rather than rejecting her. "As you know, recommendation and training aside, Amy was very rough around the edges when she first came down to Florida. Honestly, I expected to give her three months or so then let her go. But she has impressed me with her work ethic and willingness to learn. Her work in the ring isn't particularly orthodox, but she really does want to make a success of this. Her first few matches on NXT haven't been too bad, in my opinion. Give her the time, and I think she has some genuine potential."
"You think she could be main roster material in the future?"
Bayley nodded. "It's definitely possible. My recommendation, as you see on the report, is to stick with her." She was glad that after only a couple of years in her new role, Hunter allowed and trusted her to not only make recommendations like that to him, he would often listen to them. In her favour was the fact that she had proven herself to be a good judge of character and talent.
Hunter set Amy Morgan's report aside and picked up the next one. "Ah, from someone getting started, to someone who's about ready to step up. Elena D'Agostino," he announced.
The first female Italian wrestler in WWE, Elena had carved out a role for herself in NXT as one of the brand's best heels. Her powerful, no nonsense, hight impact style in the ring was perfect for the part, as was her thick Italian accent. At one of the previous meetings with Bayley, Hunter had found himself comparing Elena to a Bond villain. It was an idea that had stuck in his mind, and it was how she had been booked ever since.
Nodding again, Bayley said, "You said it yourself, she's about ready to step up. She's been the NXT Women's Champion twice, she's over as a heel, and there's nothing else I can really offer her in training. I'd say she's main roster ready whenever you want to pull the trigger on it."
"Agreed," Hunter said without thinking about it. "That was one of the things I had in mind to say to you today. We'll have her called up in the coming weeks, depending on creative. Once she's main roster established, I've got a gimmick in mind for her."
"Go on, please." Bayley loved this kind of discussion. Fantasy booking and gimmick creation had been a hobby of hers since she had first gotten into wrestling as a kid. Her enthusiasm for it had not diminished in the least over the years.
"I see her in the role of a mafia boss. For obvious reasons, we wouldn't actually use the word mafia, but we would still make it abundantly clear that's what we're going for."
"I like it," Bayley said thoughtfully. "So, presumably Elena would have other women working for her, serving under her, whatever the right term is in the mafia?"
"Exactly. She would have an underboss, and then at least two more women below that level. That's how mafia families are structured, in very basic terms anyway."
"Quite a big team then, four or five women. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing; it's just a lot for the faces to go up against."
"That's true, but we can of course have some of the faces team up to take them on. Maybe we can work it so that the three English women we have are all on the same roster as this mafia team."
Bayley liked that idea. A few years earlier, the move had been made to have the main roster's women divided between Raw and Smackdown in the same way that the men were. At the time, the decision had been widely criticised, but it had worked out fine. The three women in question were Lucy Rollins, the big star of women's wrestling, who was unfortunately probably not all that far from the end of her career, Paige, and Selena Robbins, a recent call up from NXT who worked under the name Rieke, which meant 'woman who has the power of a wolf.' A team of those three ladies would be a formidable one indeed. "Yes, that's a very good idea," she said.
"Anyway, that's a way down the line. Let's see who's next." Hunter picked up the next report. "Ah, Mackenzie Sawyer. She's one I definitely like the look of." He read alound from the report, choosing the part that he agreed with: the positive bullet points: "Very suitable for babyface work. Excellent technique. Proficient mat wrestler."
"Mack's got a lot of talent," Bayley confirmed. "However, I would leave her in NXT for a while longer."
"Yes," Hunter agreed. "As you've listed here, her promo work needs a lot of work, and she could use some improvement on her selling. She's got the basics to make something of herself, but she needs fine tuning."
"We're working on it," Bayley assured him. "But yes, we need to get her into some more classes for her promo work."
"I'll set that up," Hunter said, making a note for himself on his copy of Mackenzie's report. "While we're at it, what do you make of her brother?"
"Chase? Well, I don't train the guys..."
"I know that," Hunter said patiently. "But that doesn't mean you don't get to see them work and form an opinion. I'm asking for your input, not for you to stake your job on the guy."
"Of course, sorry," Bayley said, feeling a little chastised. "He's not a particularly easy person to talk to. You know when people are kind of distant? But having said that, he's fiercly loyal to his sister, which is admirable, and you can tell he enjoys himself in the ring. As far as his work is concerned, he's all power game. If you have a need for that kind of thing in a heel, he could be your guy. For anything more than that, you'd really have to speak to one of the guys who are training him."
Hunter had not gained anything from that exchange that he hadn't already known, but it had been worth a shot. "Next," he said simply, picking up another report.
They worked their way down the pile, discussing each female wrestler in turn. Sadly for Bayley, who never liked to upset people, there were a couple for which she had no choice but to recommend their release, as they simply were not up to the required standard. It was the one part of her job that she hated.
Knowing exactly that, and seeing it written all over Bayley's face, Hunter made a decision. "I'll come down and handle it. I don't get down there anything like as often as I would like these days, so it will be good to see everyone."
"Thanks, Hunter," Bayley said, not bothering to try and hide her relief. She had worked for the guy for well over ten years now; he knew her like the back of his hand.
There was one report remaining. Hunter picked it up and smiled at the picture of a young African-American woman wearing a white and dark blue baseball cap. "Clementine Rollins," he announced. He had known the adopted daughter of Seth and Lucy Rollins for almost as long as they had, due to the fact that she had been a semi-regular guest backstage since the age of ten. Way back then, she had expressed her determination to be a wrestler. That determination had never lessened over time. Now, nineteen year old Clem was just getting started on NXT after working with Bayley and her team for several months. Reading down the report, Hunter paused at the bullet point section. There were only two in the negative column: inexperienced in the ring, and limited move set.
"Inexperienced in the ring, and limited move set? That's all you had to put down for negatives?" he asked, looking up at Bayley.
"Honestly, yes. And even those are more of a statement of the obvious than negatives, since we're talking about a nineteen year old. I put them there so that there was something. There are no real weaknesses in her that I can see. DDP really did a great job with her training, that much is obvious. We both know how determined she's always been to succeed, but I get the impression that Seth and Lucy have also driven her quite hard."
"Well, Seth especially knows how hard it can be to make it in this business," Hunter said. He chose not to make a point of the fact that Lucy had only managed to do it because Stephanie had picked her out as a potential signing and had then been insistent that she should be pushed consistently. To her credit, Lucy had stuck with the business long after she had made enough money to hang up her boots. It showed that, in time, she had come to love wrestling as much as her husband, who also still wrestled part time for the company.
"I know it'll be my job to make sure she keeps her head down and keeps up that determined attitude. If she does, the sky is the limit for Clem, as far as I'm concerned. Her promo work in particular is amazing; the best of anyone I've trained. In addition to that, she has promising technique, a convincing striking game, and she can really sell. Put a good gimmick on her, because in two or three years, she's going to be the star of the women's division on whatever brand you put her on."
Hunter nodded thoughtfully. "I have to ask, is there any chance that you're swayed by the fact that you've known her since she was a kid?"
"No, not at all," Bayley said indignantly. "If anything, I've been trying to judge her more critically than the others for that exact reason."
It was as Hunter had expected, but it was still a question that had needed to be asked. "Fair enough," he said pleasantly. "And yet, you recommend her this highly?"
Bayley was stuck in the positon of trying to explain what a potential star they had on their hands, without sounding like she was gushing. "She has natural talent, nine years of being around the business, determination to succeed, a willingness both to learn herself and to help the others learn, and she's a genuinely nice girl, as you know. I think that's as important as the other things, in some ways."
"It is," Hunter agreed. "I'm happy to hear how much of a prospect you think Clem is, Bayley, but I need you to keep it from her. She's young, and if you let on what we think of her it might go to her head. That would be a bad thing, needless to say. Making sure she develops into what you belive she can be, if you're correct, is going to be your biggest challenge to date. Get it right, and it will also be your biggest achievement."
Having not thought of it in quite those terms before, Bayley took in a deep breath and nodded seriously. "Trust me, I've got this."
A/N: There we have it, guys. The first chapter of Clementine Rollins' story. This is more of an introduction, as the timeline willadvance in the next chapter. But I hope you enjoyed learning a few things about some of the OC characters I'll be using, as well as Clementine's potential as Bayley saw it.
This is the first time I've done a story with OC characters like this, so I would love to get your thoughts.
