Everyone was called for a meeting a few hours before the next episode of Raw. The tables in catering had been pushed up against the wall and all the chairs had been lined up in several rows, the wresters sitting up towards the front, the referees in the middle and all the production people in the back. Cooper and Connor were lingering outside the room, close enough to hear what was going on but hidden away so they wouldn't be seen. Connor had wanted to go sit down with everyone else but Cooper wouldn't let him. Not only was he not entirely sure Phil was wrong about them having a ban on them or not. Even if they didn't, Connor still couldn't go into the meeting because he couldn't behave for shit. As soon as they would sit down he'd start getting everyone off topic or want to do something else.

The mood inside the room was uncomfortable, to say the least. Phil was sitting in the row before the referees with Beth, Natalya, Morrison, Mike, Ron and Alberto. In the row in front of them Kelly and Eve were talking quietly to each other. Eve had her arm around Kelly's shoulder, who was sniffling loudly and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. That confused Phil quite a bit, just for the fact that as far as he knew, Kelly and Ted had never been close. At least not close enough to warrant such an upset reaction from her. Had they been friends and Phil had just completely missed it? Was Kelly just THAT sensitive. Or had Ted joined the growing list of men Kelly had fucked around with? That seemed like the most likely option to Phil. The locker room was just full of people that bounced from one relationship to another, Kelly being rather notorious for it. When she and Ted would have hooked was beyond Phil. It couldn't have been too recent he didn't think because she had just broken up with Justin Gabriel not that long ago and was supposed to be dating some hockey player. And why am I suddenly thinking so much about this? God help me I think I've become one of the chicks.

Up at the front of the room, Vince, Stephanie, Hunter and John Laurinaitis were gathered in a little circle, talking quietly amongst themselves. They were the ones who had called this meeting but they had yet to get it started. "How much longer do you think this is going to take?" Phil whispered to Morrison.

Mor shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Hopefully not too much longer. I gotta go to the bathroom."

"I didn't need to know that buddy."

Mike smirked, totally listening in on their conversation. "If you think that's bad Punkaroo, you really don't want to know some of the shit he's said to me before. Our fair JoMo can be a gross little bitch when he wants to be."

Mor rolled his eyes at his ex. "Shut up Miz-Bitch."

"Make me Miss Glitter Abs."

"That's MR. Glitter Abs to you."

Phil shook his head. If he didn't know better he would have thought they had gotten back together or something. They always fought more when they dated, as proven during their entire stint as a tag team and during just at the beginning of the year, before breaking up again by the Royal Rumble. Mor was back with Drew McIntyre again (or at least he was supposed to be-the fact that they weren't sitting next to each other pointed to problems in paradise) and Mike was denying rumors that he and Ron were fucking around with each other. He had made the same claims about his relationships with Alex Riley and Mor at first, so odds were, some stuff had gone down. Wonder how Maryse feels about that…oh wait, I'm not supposed to care. Phil chewed on his lower lip, doing his best to act like he gave absolutely no shits about the places his mind was taking him.

"Can I have your attention please?" the ever raspy voice of John Laurinaitis asked, getting everyone's eyes on him. He had the ever present deer in the headlights look he always had when he had to speak in front of any kind of crowd but he proceeded on like a good little corporate puppet he was. "Mr. McMahon would like to say a few words to you all."

Phil rolled his eyes and folded his arms over his chest. It was ridiculous to him that Vince needed this clown to introduce him but it wasn't exactly surprising. Vince nodded at Laurinaitis as he stepped forward and then slowly scanned his eyes across all the people sitting before him. "As you all know by now, our own Ted DiBiase Jr. died just a few short days ago. From what we still don't know but we are making sure the answer is found out as fast as it possibly could.

Of course you are, Phil thought, barely repressing a snort. You want to know whether he O.D. on something so you know whether to pretend he never existed or not.

"Now, some of us did know Ted better than others." Vince's eyes drifted over to Randy and Cody as he said that. "But I think we can all agree that he would have wanted the show to go on."

Phil pretty much stopped listening after that. He found that whole little spiel of "the show must go on" to be a pile of shit. Now he couldn't be sure about anyone else because he couldn't read their minds but he knew that he wouldn't be all for the show going on if he died. He'd rather just have like the world just stop and have that be that. Of course he knew that could never be but still, the whole "show must go on" mentality just didn't feel right-at least not when he was so sure that Vince was more concerned about the money he was going to lose if he didn't have Raw that night instead of what the person that died would have really wanted. From the sounds of it, they were going to halt storylines for the night and just wrestle, though since he wasn't listening he couldn't be sure. Whatever. He would just do it and maybe talk to Randy and Cody and see how they were holding up. They didn't look like they were doing that great, and that thought was only reaffirmed when they were the first ones to bail after the meeting was adjourned.

…

"I can't believe he's gone." Cody had lost track of how many times he had said that so far. It felt like the millionth time he had said it but it was worth repeating. None of this felt real. It really didn't. It felt like some kind of awful dream that he just wanted to wake up from. It wasn't a dream though. There would be no waking up. Ted was gone and they still didn't even know what had happened to him. He had tried to call his family to see how they had been but hadn't been able to get through. They probably had taken the phone off the hook or something. He couldn't say he blamed them for it. He would try back again later though, and if he still didn't get an answer sometime soon he would just go to their house and talk to them himself. He had no idea what he would say really, but he would go and try to think of something.

Randy nodded in agreement. He hadn't really been saying much, mostly because he saw no sense in repeating the same thing over and over again like Cody. It didn't feel real to him either though, if he was going to be completely honest with himself. He had gone over the events of that night over and over again in his head, even though the memories were pretty hazy. He shouldn't have gotten drunk like that. Sure he had had no way of knowing of what was going to happen but he shouldn't have gotten so fucked up. One of them should have stayed sober. All three of them fucked up had never worked out well in the past and this by far had the worst result ever.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew he had to stop laying this guilt trip on himself. It hadn't been his fault and nothing he probably could have done anyway. Only reason he was really getting into this whole self blame thing was because other people had been putting it in his head as they talked to him about what happened. The way they had all looked at him…especially Hunter and Vince…it just bothered him. The old him would have gotten extremely defensive about it but he had forced himself to keep quiet and not react too much to it all. As much as it bothered him, he had matured to the point that he realized throwing a temper tantrum would do nothing but land him in more hot water. Some people needed a form of a scapegoat; someone they could say should have been watching Ted or at least be sober enough to give a better story about what had happened. And of course nobody expected it to be Cody. Cody, drunk or sober, had always been the least useful of the three of them. Two of them now…just two…as bad as it sounded Randy felt like he was going to need a drink just to process that.

…

Down in Mississippi, Ted sat in the middle of the living room floor, his mouth and hands drenched in blood, observing all the damage he had done. The bodies of his once grieving family members were strung out all over the place. Why he had come all the way here just to kill his own wasn't something he could answer. Something in his mind had told him to do it so he had done it. And what had he felt as he did it? Absolutely nothing. He had felt nothing towards his own family. No love, no anything-if his memories hadn't told him they were his family they would have just as soon be strangers to him.

He slowly got back up to his feet and licked the blood off his hands before wiping his mouth off with the back of his arm and licking that up too. The hunger was satisfied for now but now he needed to do something else. There was a stirring in his stomach that his instincts told him could only be satisfied by one way.

It was time to breed.