A/N: Okay, so first of all, so sorry this one took so long to pop up. I've been crazy busy for months so I've been unable to write as much as I would have liked to.
I'm chosing a tricky one this time. The Undertaker. How exactly does one genderbend the Undertaker, of all people? Well, by making 'her' smaller for a start. And when you think about it, it's okay for the Undertaker to be smaller. The character is supposed to be undead with mystical powers (a bit odd that those powers only pop up sporadically and not, for instance, when he's getting his ass handed to him, but whatever). As such, the Undertaker's strength (in kayfabe at least) does not rely on his size so much.
As a woman, I can't see the Undertaker being near 7 feet tall and weighing over 300 pounds as he was billed. I would imagine her as much taller than most women and a lot of men, but no taller than 6' 5". As for the right weight, I'd say no less than 200 pounds but more than 240 would make her far too bulky. So those are the perimeters. Big but not overly so. Agile, strong and technically sound but no stand-out in any of it.
Now for the names. The Undertaker has a few nicknames. The Phenom and the Deadman are the most used. The Phenom can be used for a female Undertaker, no sweat, though I'm going to turn that into Lady Phenom. But the Deadman will not now, nor will it ever become the Deadwoman. No, no, no! I don't think I need to explain why that is (please tell me I don't). The Grim Reaper is a possibility if the story allows for it but it's not likely that one will pop up very often.
The nature of the character means I don't have a whole lot of emotion or passion to work with for much of the story but let's see if there's anything that can 'stir' Lady Phenom.
As per usual, I am going to assume that you know enough about the Undertaker's career to know what most of this is about. Having said that, it doesn't quite happen the same way. It takes place in 1997.
She watched with dispassionate eyes as the Heartbreak Worm made his way down the ramp, followed by his ever present lackeys, Helmsley and Chyna. She watched as he danced his way around the ring, strutting and posing for the fans.
She almost smiled as she noticed that although he was smiling, he was also keeping a wary eye on her. He was an idiot, but he was no fool.
The previous two months had obviously served to teach him that the Grim Reaper was nobody you wanted to mess with and, though it had not stopped him from getting on her last nerve, it had made him cautious enough to stay out of dodge for the most part, usually sending Helmsley to do his dirty work.
Less than a week earlier she had watched him climb up the titantron to get away from her, leaving Helmsley and Chyna to receive his rightful beating. It hadn't bothered her to see him get away. She would have her day and she would have it soon.
Her problems with Shawn Michaels had started at that year's SummerSlam when he had cost her the World title against Bret Hart by hitting her with a steel chair. She had never liked Shawn Michaels to start with. She found him too foolish, too arrogant. She had never really bothered with him because of this, chosing to ignore him for the most part. When he hit her with the chair, she would ignore him no more. Intentional or not, it didn't matter. She would have her revenge.
After a very unsatisfying draw at the Ground Zero pay-per-view in September, she had laid out a challenge to Michaels. A Hell in a Cell match at Badd Blood. He had accepted, but then she had known that he would. Too foolish, too arrogant.
She watched him now as he stripped himself of his outer gear, still hamming it up for the fans. She wondered, and not for the first time, if the man knew just how stupid he looked when he did that. She brushed it off. It was time.
The match went the way she had expected it to with only a few minor glitches. The first was when the cage was opened to get an injured referee out, allowing Michaels to escape the cage and climb it. She had climbed after him and they had battled it out on top of the cage. After she had sufficiently kicked his face in on top of the cage, she decided it was time they got back into the ring. It was time to finish it.
She had forced him down the side of the cage, kicking him off when he was halfway down. She then hauled his carcass back into the ring and hit him with the tombstone piledriver.
The fans cheered. She almost smiled. She had him. She finally had him. The title was now so close she could taste it.
And then, as she dropped down to her knees for the pin, everything changed.
First the lights went out. She quickly got back to her feet.
Then music played and she watched, baffled and more than a little unsettled, as a large man she didn't know made his way down the ramp, followed closely by a man she did know, very well in fact.
Paul Bearer. She'd be lying if she said his betrayal didn't hurt. It did. It probably always would.
For years, the man had stood at her side. Through the good and the bad, he had supported her. But had he really? If he genuinely hated her as much as he seemed to, as he said he did, had he ever truly supported her? She didn't know. She had gone through every last one of her memories of the man, had watched every one of her own matches, focusing solely on the man on the outside of the ring, and she still didn't know.
There was nothing to indicate he hated her. Quite the opposite. Throughout the years she had been in many feuds, and he had been a steadfast ally during all of them, more than once throwing himself in harm's way to help her, despite his clear lack of fighting ability.
When she had been so brutally beaten by Giant Gonzales at the Royal Rumble in 1993, he had been beside himself. When she had been attacked by half a dozen men and stuffed into a casket during her match against the gargantuan Yokozuna in 1994, he had put her up in his own house, caring for her during the weeks it took her to recover. Time and time again he had been there. Was it all an act? A charade? Was he just biding his time until he could betray her?
To her, it had come out of nowhere, blindsiding her completely. She had been in a Boiler Room Brawl against Mankind at SummerSlam, the stipulation being that whoever made it to the ring and got hold of the urn held by Paul Bearer would win the match. She had been hesitant to accept the match. What if Mankind made it to the ring first, and hurt Bearer to get the urn? Bearer had talked her into accepting the match, assuring her that he would be fine. She felt so stupid looking back on it, but how was she supposed to know?
She had, after a brutal fight, made it to the ring first. She had kneeled in front of Bearer, cupping her gloved hands to receive the urn and he had turned away from her.
The idea of him turning on her had been so foreign to her, that she thought he must have been confused. Did he not realize that he was supposed to give her the urn? She had shuffled closer, grasping his coat with one hand and finally he had turned back to her. She had had just enough time to say his first name before he brought the urn down, crashing it into her skull, hurting far more than just her head.
She was brought back to reality when the big man preceding Paul Bearer ripped the cage door clear off its hinges, and threw it to the side. She could see Michaels crawling into a corner like the cockroach he was, but had no time to pay him any mind. The big man was mowing his way through referees and was now climbing into the ring.
She frowned as she looked at the monstrous man in front of her. She was confused for a moment. 'Who…?'
And then she saw his eyes. One of them was damaged, milky white and presumably useless. But the other one… Something in the heart people said she didn't have stirred, telling her she knew this man, though she hadn't seen him since he was but a boy.
"Kane…" she breathed.
It was impossible. Simply impossible. He had died in that fire, she knew he had. She'd been told repeatedly that he had. Bearer had been saying for months that he was bringing him in but she hadn't believed him. How could she have? She had mourned the death of her baby brother for years, how could he now be here?
Her face was slack as she slowly approached him and stood less than a foot away from him. He towered over her, impossibly tall. And she remembered the boy he had been, the boy who hated being small and thin. She had told him then, as his older and wiser sister, that he would not remain small and thin. That one day he would be taller than most anyone else. He hadn't believed her but she had been right.
He stood in front of her now, only that one eye linking him to the boy she had known, no discernible emotion on what little she could see of his face. This close up she could see the scars on his face, scars left by the inferno on that fateful night.
Her hand came up of its own accord. "Oh, Kane," she whispered, her face and voice pained.
As her fingers brushed the red and black mask, emotion flared up on the big man's face for the first time but she had no time to wonder what that emotion was as in the next second, his hand was around her throat and he chokeslammed her. She was faintly aware of being picked up off the mat again and then slammed down again, this time in her very own tombstone piledriver.
Her vision went dark and when she regained consciousness, Michaels' arm was retreating from where it had been draped over her and the bell was ringing.
She had lost the match but it barely registered. Kane! She struggled to sit up and when she managed it, she looked into the aisle. She caught a glimpse of Michaels and his cronies scurrying away but her eyes were fixed to the retreating giant.
"Kane," she whispered again, her face crumpling as the pain hit her. Not the pain in her body, but the pain in her heart.
A/N: There is of course far more to the story and this does leave so many questions unanswered but as these are supposed to be one-shots, I couldn't really address those questions.
