Disclaimer Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso are the property of the WWE and/or the actors / sports entertainers / superstars that portray them. This story is intended as tribute only and is not intended to infringe on any copyrights.

Original characters are the property of myself, and only children of my own imagination. Any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

The Girl Who Lives
Part Four

When Dean opened the door that lead into the basemen, Seth let out a long whistle as he got his first glimpse of the boiler room. It was everything a good boiler room / Nerf war grounds should be. There were lots of large pipes running about the ceiling, and lots of big metal things on the ground, most safely behind chain link fences. There were wide hallways for easy access with huge cement supports to hide around. And, it was surprisingly clean for a boiler room. The stadium was only five years old or so, but experience had taught them that boiler rooms could become filthy in a short amount of time. It was obvious that whoever was in charge of this place, made sure the boiler room was kept relatively clean. The concrete floor even had a thick, recent looking coat of gray industrial paint on it. There were stairs and metal grating walkways to access upper parts of the boiler and other equipment down here. This was a serious room, it hadn't been re-purposed to double as a storage area, as seemed to be the fate of many boiler rooms, it seemed still be dedicated to only one thing, to hold the big equipment needed to keep this stadium running efficiently.

"Very nice," Seth said, as he walked around a little bit, to get the feel of it. "Perfect for some good Nerfing." It even had a faint smell of machine oil and the weird, faintly stagnant smell from when water turned to steam. It helped give the room a futuristic, industrial feel to it. It wasn't too hard to imagine when you were here, that there was panic going on in the outside world and they had found their way in here to escape the chaos. Of course, they would make their own chaos inside, but that was the point of Nerfing, wasn't it?

"That's what we thought," Dean said, grinning. "I suggest we play Capture the Flag. There's four of us, and I grabbed a couple bandanas." He held out the objects in question, two dollar store bandanas, one in red, the other in navy blue.

"Sounds good," Roman said. Seth agreed, looking at Payton, who nodded too, even though Seth had the feeling she had no clue what Capture the Flag was.

"I suggest Roman and us against you three. Family versus..." Jimmy paused looking at Seth, Dean and Payton and frowned. "You pale guys? I don't know what you want to call yourselves."

"How about, we're the Red team?" Seth suggested, taking the blue bandana from Dean and tossing it to Roman, who caught it easily. "We'll be the red team, you can be the blue team."

"I wanted to be red!" Jey protested, but he was grinning.

"Too bad," Seth said. "Your brother picked the teams, we get to pick our flag color. We want red." He didn't add that he probably would have picked the same teams, he wanted to make sure Payton was on his team because he was looking out for her, and Dean was a good player. Roman was too, but Dean was crazy and reckless, while Seth was cautious and careful. Roman was somewhere in the middle. With looking out for Payton as well as himself, Seth figured he needed a little craziness on his side.

The Red team would put their flag on the North side of the long room, the Blue team would cover the south. Each team had two minutes to discuss their strategy before the battle would begin. Since Dean and Seth had played so often that Seth used their two minutes to explain to Payton how the game worked, using rules they had found online, but modified for their purposes, as most of their Nerf games seemed to be. "The object of the game is to get their flag and bring it back to our base," Seth said, bending down, hands on his knees so he was eye to eye with Payton. The flag has to be visible and it can't be tied to anything." The last one was a rule made when Roman, who was really good at making knots, had tied the bandana in such a way no one could undo it. "And it has to be visible, your team can't hide it. You can guard it, though. If you get the flag and are hit bringing it back, then they can take back their flag and put it back. You have to come back over to where our flag is, before you can start out again.

"What if someone shoots me as I'm heading back after being shot?" Payton asked, her brow furrowed as she tried to quickly absorb and memorize all this information being given to her.

"Ignore it, you're immune while you're returning," Dean filled in, "When you've been shot and you're returning to base, we call it ghosting and you can't hurt a ghost." Seth nodded.

"What if I run out of ammo?" Payton asked.

"Yell, 'time' as loud as you can," Seth fielded this one. "You have thirty seconds to gather up as much ammo as you can and in that thirty seconds hits don't count. But the best thing is to try to gather ammo as you're playing. Stick it in your pockets and when you get a chance, reload. But you have plenty of ammo, right?" He had made sure to give her all the ammo he had for the Maverick, including three full ammo cases she now had clipped around the waistband of her jeans. She had tucked in the too-long t-shirt the best she could to have easier access. Seth wasn't too worried though, Roman and the Uso's were not going to take advantage of a young girl trying to gather ammo. Payton nodded.

"Any other questions?" Dean asked, impatient to get the game started. "We've got under thirty seconds before we start."

"No, I get it," Payton said as she put on the eye protection Seth had given her.

Dean was using a stopwatch application on his cell phone. When it beeped, he yelled out, "Time's up!" and the game began.

Dean had volunteered to be the first to stay close to the flag to defend it, so Payton and Seth started down the hall both trying to be careful and quick, since both things were of equal importance. Unlike when they usually played Capture the Flag, Seth wasn't splitting up from Payton so they both went down the hall together. Seth wasn't sure that being in a strange place might prove to be too much for the little girl and didn't want her to get disorientated.

Jimmy and Jey had taken the "divide and conqueror" strategy, each taking a different hallway. The boiler room had machinery and equipment on all four sides against the wall, then in the center, leaving two wide hallways. Seth looked up and spotted Jimmy just as Jimmy spotted them, but with quick thinking, he was able to leap behind a cement support column easily over three feet in diameter, pulling Payton with him. A foam bullet went whizzing by, going right through where they would be standing. "Crouch down low," Seth half whispered, half mouthed to Payton, who nodded, her eyes shining. "When I hold up two fingers, lean out to the left and start firing. I'll be up higher and take the right. Got it? Okay," he held up one finger, then another. She leaned to the left around the column, him to the right and they began firing. Jimmy tried to duck behind another column, but while he was expecting Seth to fire on him, he had apparently forgotten about Payton and she got him, right at the knees. He let out a mock shriek and fell to the ground.

"Did I hurt him?" Payton asked, looking alarmed.

Seth shook his head. "He's fine, he's just hamming it up." Louder, he called to Jimmy, "Stop faking and get back to the flag!"

"No fair!" Jimmy shouted, his voice much more cheerful than his words would indicate. "Two against one!"

"Yeah, and this means your brother has a clear shot to the flag," Seth said, "So quit yer bit-bellyaching!" Even as he was saying it, Jimmy was heading back towards his teams flag. Now it would be Roman's turn to venture forth, as it would be Jimmy's to guard the flag.

"Careful," Seth warned Payton. "Roman knows me really well, so he's trickier for me to avoid. He knows the type of places I like to hide."

Payton nodded, her expression serious, but her eyes were still glittering and her cheeks were pink. It was obvious she was enjoying this. "I got him," she whispered, "I got Mr. Uso!"

"Yeah, you did, I'm glad you're on my team," Seth whispered back.

They made their way up the hall, hearing Roman taking Jimmy to task. "You got shot by a kid?" he was saying. "A little girl? Man, you are a disgrace!"

"Hey!" Jimmy defended himself. "That 'little girl' has awesome aim!"

"Excuses, excuses," Roman said, shaking his head sadly, "You watch the flag now. I'll take sell out Seth and the kid out. I shouldn't have sent a boy to do a man's job."

"Bite me, Cous," was Jimmy's response. "I don't think you'll fare any better."

Meanwhile, they heard commotion behind them. Obviously, Jey had gotten to the red flag and thus, to Dean. Dean, however, wasn't going to just let Jey waltz in and have the flag. Soon enough, they could hear Dean's laughter. "Not this time, Uso!" he cackled. "Back to your base, this flag is safe!"

"Sonofa-," Jey muttered, but didn't finish the though, mostly likely because he knew there was a kid here. They heard the sound of his feet running up the hall towards his base. Slowly and carefully, they started out behind the support post.

And were both hit quickly by Roman, who had taken advantage of the noise his cousin had made to sneak up on them. "Jerk!" Seth called out, sounding madder than he really was. Roman was smirking, of course, looking pleased with himself.

"Spoken like a loser!" Roman called out. "Back to the base, dead man and kid!"

"No fair!" Payton called too, but the grin on her face indicated her protests were tokens. They turned and ran down to Dean.

"Aw man," Dean said, when he saw them. "No flag?" He shook his head. "Well, now both of you can watch the flag. Let the real Nerf pro show you how it's done." He waited until they were right up to where the flag was stuck between two links on a chain link fence that was there to keep the unauthorized people from getting to the equipment. Unauthorized people such as five wrestlers and a little girl playing with Nerf guns. Some ammo had already gone inside the fence, ammo they knew they could all kiss good bye. There were a lot of arenas out there that had unclaimed ammo in them.

The were barely situated close to the flag, and Dean out of sight, when Seth heard the sound of footsteps, trying to walk lightly, but not completely succeeding. "I think that's Roman coming," he whispered. "Go, hide behind that support column," he pointed to another one of those thick cement columns. "He'll see me and try to take me out, He'll have forgotten about you. Get him before he gets the flag."

She nodded and slipped behind the column, just in time. Roman appeared at the end of the hall. Seth made like he was looking up the other hallway. Keeping a close eye and his gun trained on Seth, Roman sneaked towards the flag. Just as his fingers were reaching for the bandana, Payton leaned around the column and fired. Before Roman could realize what was happening and take aim, she hit him in the hip. Roman whipped around, but he had been hit.

"Gotcha!" Payton shouted, and started jumping up and down in triumph.

"Aw, crap!" Roman shook his head, but he was grinning. "No fair, two against one!"

"Quit 'cher whining and head back to your HQ," Seth said, showing no mercy on his brother by choice. "She got you, fair and square."

"Yeah, yeah," Roman said, as he turned and grinned to Payton. "Good shooting, Pay." With that, he headed back up the hall to where his flag was.

He was barely gone when Dean returned, without the flag. "Jey got me," he muttered.

"Oh, what happened to Mister, 'I'll-show-you-how-it's-done'?" Seth teased.

"Yeah? Well, there are two of you, let's see if you can do it." Dean retorted. He took his place by the flag, but before Seth and Payton could head off, he spun to the left and fired his gun, hitting Jey square in the chest. "Gotcha, sucker!"

"Aw, man!" Jey exclaimed, tossing the bullet he'd been shot with back to Dean. "You guys are on fire today! No fair!" He turned and jogged down the hall.

Meanwhile, Seth and Payton were heading carefully down the hall. Seth was impressed with Payton, she seemed to have a natural instinct for this and her footsteps were almost silent. Seth pulled her behind another column to go over some quick plans. "When we get up there, you take cover. There's a column up there. I think Roman will be flag guard by then, but I'll distract him. You grab the flag and run like the wind, okay?"

She nodded, then looked worried. "What if he shoots me?"

"Then we return back to our flag and try again," Seth said, ruffling her hair. "It's just a game, don't worry about it. We like to win, but it isn't the most important thing. The important thing is that we have fun. Got it?"

She nodded. "Got it. And I'll do my best!"

"I know you will."

They quickly, but quietly made their way up to the enemy flag, which was indeed being watch by Roman. Seth nodded to Payton who slipped behind the column. Seth started sneaking over the deliberately paused, covered his nose and pretended to stifle a sneeze. Roman whipped around aiming his gun. The two men fired at about the same time, each hitting the other. "I got you first!" Seth yelled.

"No way, Rollins, I got you first,!" Roman protested.

"In your dreams, Reigns!" Seth argued back, walking closer to the taller man. "You're down!"

"You're down!" Roman said, stepping closer to Seth so he was right in his face.

"Don't argue with me!" Seth said, not backing down. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Payton slip out from behind the column and run for the flag. Seth wanted to keep Roman distracted, so he smashed his index finger into Roman's chest. "I got you first! I saw that shot hit you before I felt yours hit me! So you are hit!"

"No!" Roman said, right back, "I saw my shot hit you before I felt yours!"

Seth watched Payton's fingers closed around the flag and she pulled it free from the chain link fence. She tucked it into her shirt and started running down the hall. He grinned to Roman. "All right, I guess you did get me." He turned and started jogging down the hall.

"Damned right!" Roman called after him, then turned and looked at where the flag was supposed to be. "Aw shi-shoot!" he yelled then took off down the hall after them.

But Seth had bought Payton enough time. By the time they got to the red base, Payton was jumping up and down, showing off the blue flag. Dean hugged the girl and lifted her up in the air. "We win!" He shouted, holding the young girl, who waved the blue bandana triumphantly. "In your face, blue team!"

When Seth got there, he saw Payton's face was glowing brighter than he'd ever seen it. It was as if a light had gone on inside of her. Her cheeks were pink from the exertion and her eyes were sparkling. "I did it!" she shouted. "I got the flag! Thank you, Seth!" When Dean put her down, she ran over and threw her arms around Seth, hugging him tightly. Seth lifted her off the ground, hugging her back and spinning her around.

"You're the best," he exclaimed. "Any time we're around and we can play Nerf? I want you on my team!"

Payton beamed and Seth had the feeling this might have been the most fun she had in a very, very, long time.

End of Part Four

Special Thanks to:

Emilee: Thank you so much for your kind words about the first two chapters. I'm sorry you had problems posting a review for the third chapter. I've noticed FFnet seems to be having problems off and on again, so it might have been that. I'm glad you thought a Nerf battle sounded cute, I hope you think so after you read this chapter. Thank you so much for your reviews.

Kina: I rather like the relationship between Seth and Payton too. I think with her brother being so ill and her parents seeming to focus all their time on Preston, Payton needs a father figure/big brother/favorite uncle in her life and I think Seth is filling that role quite nicely. And I thank you kindly for your review.

Author's Notes: Wow, 42 reviews, 26 favorites, 36 follows on the first three chapters. I am amazed at how well this story is being received. Thank you! I adore reviews, so please keep them coming, But favorites and follows are pretty nice too. I just hope all of you continue to enjoy the story.