A huge thanks goes out to everyone who's reviewed/favorited this story, and the people who are signed up for alerts to it! Before chapter four, here's a little comment from my editor, jcott3.
Hello, everyone. Good to see that so many people like this story so far. For the record, the original story wasn't quite as bad as fanwriter says it was. The basic story idea and the plot points were there. Most of what I did was two things: 1) have the story unfold over a longer time period at a slower pace so we could flesh out the characters better and 2) add a major story arc in the second half, to help the story better build to a conclusion. This story will have a little of everything - romance between the Divas and their bodyguards, action between the Divas and the returning invasion force. There will also be some comedy, some drama, some more returning stars (some for the duration, some in one-shot cameos). So sit back, enjoy the ride and keep the reviews coming.
Now, on to the chapter. c;
CHAPTER FOUR
Due to Beth seriously being injured on Monday Night RAW, the six-Diva tag team match that had originally been scheduled, last-minute, was now going to be Tamina, Maryse, and Rosa Mendes going up against Natalya, Alicia Fox, and Eve Torres. Thankfully, none of the other girls involved in the match had been on RAW and injured except for Beth, who Eve had taken the place of only the morning of SmackDown's taping.
Beth had yet to be given complete specifics about what had happened to her during the attack on Monday night, as they were continuing to do X-rays in case of other injuries during the blackout, and the initial fighting, and MRI scans to make sure that her brain was okay. The only certain thing was the concussion she had received, and just for how severe that was, she was going to be on bed rest in the hospital for the remainder of the week.
Now, standing in the designated Diva's locker room for the night in this arena, Eve had pulled Natalya and Alicia aside and was finishing up the full story of Monday's events for her audience of two. She explained everything that had gone on the previous night on RAW, and then the reveal of all who had been involved.
Neither Natalya nor Alicia knew if they were all technically rehired, or if they were just crashing the matches and then running back out of the arena. It would explain their hurried movements, and the blackouts that occurred.
"Just, keep your eyes out for any of them, you hear me? If you hear or see them anywhere, if you even hear a rumor about them being here, you have to make sure that you let the rest of the girls know as fast as you can, without getting yourself hurt. We've all got to be prepared for anything to happen tonight. Before we leave tonight, also, we have to talk to this guy to make sure that you guys all have bodyguards set up." Eve patted Randy on the shoulder, who nodded and raised his brows as he looked over at Cody Rhodes, standing on Eve's other side.
Having entered the locker room just in time to hear the end of the story, Maryse Ouellet let out a laugh quickly and sharply. "Bodyguards? No. Absolutely not, no one here needs bodyguards. I am Maryse, and I do not need a bodyguard for myself. Ha! Unlike the rest of you, I am very strong, and we are very strong." The blonde motioned between herself and her tag team partners for the night, Rosa and Tamina, who had followed her into the room.
"Let me just have a little thought back here, Maryse… I'm curious, did you ever wrestle any of the girls who came back? Oh, of course you have." Natalya stood up from her place on the bench and turned around, stepping over it and toward the now-incredulous girl standing in the doorway. "I almost forgot that Mickie beat you for the Diva's Championship. I guess that Eve forgot about that, and I almost did, but I didn't. I mean, you haven't even held it since last year. I held it less than three months ago." Maryse's face contorted into anger now, but she didn't move to attack Natalya, for the knowledge that she was outnumbered and overpowered. She also knew that Natalya wasn't finished. "I know you're angry about that, Maryse, but you have to stop and think about something for a second. Mickie has only gotten stronger since she beat you." Maryse was now indifferent instead of angry or humored, and Natalya sighed, looking to the girls over Maryse's shoulders.
Rosa and Tamina, who had listened but said and done nothing, shook their heads and moved out from behind Maryse to sit on a bench and continue to listen.
Eve stepped up to the plate against Maryse next, relieving Natalya of her duties while still trying to instill the fear Natalya had planted into Maryse, and surely into Rosa and Tamina. "Yes, Maryse. We are all very strong, you got that right. We're all strong, independent women-but they are all stronger, and they haven't been here in a very long time. They're even more independent than all of us in this room combined together. They know more about fighting dirty and getting away with it than anyone else in…" She turned around, looked at Randy and Cody, and then turned back to Maryse. "Than any other woman in this room. We have reasons to be afraid of them-you can't just shrug it off like it's nothing and flip your hair and hope they won't attack you next."
"I know that I'm not the best girl on the roster." Rosa finally spoke up, and everyone turned to look at her, surprised that she would. "I know that, but even I just can't make myself be afraid of the girls who've come back. If I'm afraid of them, then that means I have to admit that I just don't belong here, wrestling or otherwise."
"Rosa, that's not true."
"I'm horrible."
Eve sighed, wishing she could turn this conversation back the way it had come. "Well, sure. Maybe you're horrible sometimes. But if you are, then you just have to be good at being bad, and then that can be your strong suit here."
"I'm not sure if that's an insult or a compliment… but I guess I have no choice but to bodyguard myself. Tamina?"
Tamina looked up at the girls in the room and sighed. "You know what, I'm strong. I am beautiful. I am smart, and I am Samoan, and I am supposed to be a powerhouse on top of all of that… but I'm going to take bodyguards, because I have respect for myself and I'm not ashamed of being a little bit afraid of these girls." Eve and Natalya smiled at Tamina, before looking back over to Maryse.
The French Canadian girl was looking off into space, and when she saw that they were looking at her, she was clearly surprised. "Wait, what?" Everyone in the room was looking at her by now, and she let out a huge, weight-of-the-world sigh, before rolling her eyes. "Well, fine. Since it appears that I have absolutely no other choice than to take some idiotic bodyguard, just sign me up for Ted and I suppose I'll have to be fine with it."
The match started off just as normally as any other match did. The girls had pissed each other off between the locker room and the ring, as they normally did, and now they were beyond ready to tear each other to pieces.
Even through their anger, they were all on guard when they weren't in the ring, fighting-they knew the girls would be back tonight, or they were at least pretty damn sure-but other than that, they were going to be ripping the other girls to shreds.
Natalya locked the Sharpshooter in on Rosa, and the tension seemed to immediately have been cut in half. The air seemed a lot thinner as Rosa tapped out, crying for Natalya to let go of her, and easier to breathe in, and after celebrating the win for a short period outside of the ring, they grabbed each other's hands, raising them into the air and putting them back down.
Before the celebration could continue, out of nowhere jumped Trish Stratus, from the barricade between the crowd and the aisle, grabbing Natalya as she hit the top of her jump and fell down to hit her with a bulldog and bringing her to the ground.
Seconds later, if that, Lita jumped from the opposite barricade to grab the scared-and-confused Alicia Fox and hit her with a Lita-can-rana. Eve was slowly backing away from where Trish and Lita were looking at her, and just as Rosa, in the ring, was motioning for her to run away, she felt a hard blow to her back and fell to the ramp, rolling down to where her friends were and trying to catch her breath back.
Everyone in the ring had stood up or, in Rosa's case, gotten up onto their knees in the ring, until they heard them coming, and turned around just a second too late. Victoria kicked up her foot and connected the bottom of her boot to Tamina's face, throwing her down to the ground and lunging for her, Candice right behind her.
Maria grabbed Maryse by her long, blonde hair and pulled her in to clothesline her to the ground, jumping up onto the top rope to cross-body her as she got back up, before beginning to beat her as senseless as she could.
Rosa, the final girl of the group, was grabbed by Mickie and pulled to her feet, before getting a Mickie-DT through to her and moving to Maryse, who was fighting back against Maria.
Outside of the ring and inside, the chaos continued on. Trish took over on Alicia after Natalya was down, while Lita and Ashley moved on to Eve. Victoria connected an Implant Buster to Tamina. Ashley hit Eve with a backbreaker to her knee and then held her while Lita climbed back up onto the barricade to hit her with a flying leg drop.
Ashley, standing from where she had been holding Eve, spotted the group of men coming through the curtain first, and then screamed, "Get out of here!" to Lita and Trish, running up and into the ring. Tyson, the Usos, Randy, Chris Masters, Christian, and Ted DiBiase stopped at Eve, Alicia, and Natalya, while the girls in the ring were thrown out and to the ground.
From there, Lita walked over to the corner nearest the timekeeper and demanded a microphone. The guys outside obviously were too busy tending to the girls, especially the Usos, who were holding up Tamina as she cried in pain.
"Give me a microphone already, God damn it!" Lita shouted when they were all taking too long, and the timekeeper quickened the pace to finish her wishes. She moved to stand in the center of the ring, flanked by Trish, Candice, and Maria on one side, Victoria, Mickie, and Ashley on the other.
"Now then… before I take the time out of my day and yours to introduce myself to all of you lovely people, as well as to my fellow reinstated Divas…" Lita aimed the word almost poisonously at the Divas standing outside, as well as to the men who had come down as assistance, before turning back to the crowd. "I'm going to ask you a few questions. Obviously nothing about rocket science, but just a few questions for your…" She squinted a bit and looked out into the crowd before turning to Trish and raising her brows. "Adorable children." The girls laughed, and the short introduction was finished. "Please, I'm going to ask for only the children to be answering."
A pause followed there as everyone in the crowd shuffled awkwardly about, before the redhead front and center spoke once again. "If you are under the age of fourteen, and you know who I am, I'd like you to give me a quick cheer. Or, hell, why not just boo for me-I'm used to it, and I sort of miss it!"
There was a fairly awkward silence that spread through the arena before Lita put the microphone to her mouth and screamed angrily, "Let me hear you, damn it!" into it.
A group of probably a thousand-out of the thousands in attendance, Lita found this to be an extremely pathetic number-kids let out a shout, and the older Divas in the ring started to laugh. Lita shot a glare to both sides to shut them up, while the current Divas stood outside of the ring in awe and silence, while the "reinstatement" of the other Divas sunk into their minds.
Immediately after the crowd had silenced itself, and Lita had soothed a bit of her anger at their ignorance, Lita reached out a hand toward the Divas to her left and right, and into the crowd of girls outside of the ring. "How many of you remember the Diva searches that humiliated women? The likes of Christy Hemme, Michelle McCool, Layla, Kristal, Rosa Mendes, Maryse, Eve Torres, Tiffany… I could go on but I won't because I want to hear you shout if you remember them!"
Probably the better part of the teens and kids in the crowd, a little more than half of them, let out a shout, before Lita turned around and looked at the crowd behind her and at the Divas who were around her. Though she had mentioned three of them as contestants, she showed no anger or resentment for them. She pivoted on her heels and looked out once again to continue.
"Finally, I want to shed some light on a situation that has been kept in the dark for too long." The girls around Lita nodded in agreement. "Some of the Divas in this company have been victims of cattle calls. By that, I mean that John Laurinaitis sat down with his pervy little swimsuit catalogs and flipped through them, picking the 'prettiest' of them and calling their agency." All eyes in the ring turned to outside of it, where Alicia Fox had looked up at them. "Two in particular have been in the division's cleansing this week.
"On that note… I'm almost sure that everyone who is sitting in this arena right now knows that the Era of Parental Guidance for the WWE is completely dead and gone and there's nothing you can do about that-can I get a hell yeah?! On that matter, I'd like to point out that all of us 'older' Divas missed the fact that we could cuss each other out, and that we could smack men across the face with bouquets of roses." Christian stood in the crowd of men and was visibly uncomfortable as Lita and Trish exchanged a fist bump. "But, the thing is, when we attacked people, we didn't have to warn people, so that we didn't break a nail in the process."
Catty smirks made their way from the girls inside of the ring to the girls outside, eyes like daggers staring them down as they did so. Everyone in the group was now visibly uncomfortable if they could be, not just Christian.
"Now then, to all of you self-proclaimed beautiful people who are sitting out there in our audience, I'd like for you to give a warm welcome to all of the returning Divas of the second generation of TV-14! Give it up for Ashley!" The blonde girl who had green and pink streaks all throughout her hair stepped forward and around Candice Michelle to throw up two rock-out signs on her hands. She stuck her tongue out before stepping backward into the line.
"Maria!" The redheaded girl blew kisses out into the crowd, even though she was mostly being booed, as Ashley had.
"Candice Michelle!" The brunette Diva ripped open the small black jacket she had been wearing, smiling and winking out at the audience as she did so. She waved to the audience who knew her, though she mostly received boos.
"Mickie James!" Standing in the ring now, she wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt which had been fitted so she could move and fight in it. The country girl inside of her just couldn't help it as she jumped up and down with excitement, hyping up the crowd which had definitely missed her.
"Trish Stratus!" Trish, who had remained mostly absent since her retirement, excluding a few appearances here and there, including the most recent WrestleMania, jumped forward and threw up her index finger as she did so. She garnered a rather large cheer from the crowd, despite the fact that many of the girls had been booed.
"Victoria!" The signature crazy-faced hair-pulling that occurred just to Lita's left of Victoria's fingers going through her black and red hair caused the crowd to go wild with cheers and shouts, though there was definitely a lot of booing.
Finally, Lita herself in the center of it all stepped forward and smirked out at the crowd. "And please, let's not ruin my self esteem with that crappy applause and cheering."
She handed the microphone to Trish who announced, "Lita!"
The crowd definitely didn't applaud or cheer for her. Instead, more than any other Diva, Lita was booed. She laughed and stepped back into the line, taking the microphone from Trish and finishing her speech. "You, WWE Universe, are about to be a part of the biggest takeover ever to be shown on your television, TV-14 or not. Especially because even the audience has to watch their backs when they're in the arena with us. You want to know why?"
"Tell them, Lita."
Victoria was shown saying this, but her voice wasn't picked up by the microphone as she did so.
Regardless of this, Lita stepped forward.
"We're ready to kick some serious ass."
"Rockstar 101" by Rihanna began to play, and the reinstated Divas held up their arms, taking a bow to the cheers and the boos before looking to the girls and motioning for them to leave. Instinctively, the new Divas ran off, the men following behind them, before the reinstated Divas took another bow and left the ring, leaving through the audience.
Review, favorite. Questions? Don't be afraid to ask me! You guys will get a little taste of some romance in the next chapter, and you'll get to see some of what the returning Divas really have to think about their situation as well. Until next time!