Thank you to those who reviewed. To the rest of you…y u no review my story? D:
Warnings: a little bit of drinking. It will progressively get worse through a good bit of the story.
Disclaimers: I don't own anything WWE-related and am not affiliated with the WWE or its wrestlers…well actually that's a lie, I own a WWE merch blanket. It's very warm.
Reviews and Critique: yes please!

Chapter 2: first impressions

The following week, Jeff held true to his word. Lina met up with him at the new arena, where he promptly informed her that Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff had gotten approval for her signing by the chairman Vince McMahon. Apparently Vince wasn't too keen on it at first, as he wasn't too fond of Jeff Hardy, but Eric put her over and finally gained his consent.

Lina was signed to a five-year deal with the company. Her hand shook with so much ecstasy, her signature looked a little more wild than usual. She had to strongly resist the urge to throw her arms around Jeff, who was also present, as she pushed her contract across the table to Eric. Jeff himself signed a verification that said he would be interning her. The form said he would be training her for a few months, though Eric said they could always change that if need be. She had a feeling that she wouldn't be able to finish thanking Jeff properly any time soon. He had taken such a great chance on her and put so much out there just for a rookie who wanted a shot. Her gratitude for him was indescribable.

The two of them shook hands with Eric and left his office. Jeff started leading her around the backstage halls.

"How do you feel?" he asked her.

She didn't answer. He understood.

He ended up leading her into the green room. Collapsible tables covered in food and drink lined one of the walls. Along the adjacent wall, a coffee table sat in front of a couple of sofas. He told her to have a seat while he went to go peruse through the drinks table. He asked her what she wanted, and she said something "celebratory."

He grinned, glancing at the cooler she was referring to. "Well, I guess it'll be okay, since neither of us is fighting tonight. But we still have to go out to the ring and introduce you." He walked back to the couch with two beers and handed one to her.

"What made you change your mind?" she asked. She had the question lingering in her head since last week. He looked over at her as he sat down.

"About?"

"About letting me intern for you."

Jeff propped his feet up on the coffee table. "Couple reasons, I suppose. First and foremost is MNM. I don't know if you saw my match with Johnny Nitro last week, but I lost due to interference from Joey Mercury and Nitro's girl Melina. My brother used to have my back for me for situations like this, but since this whole scandal with Edge and Lita got him fired, I've kind of been on my own lately. Having you in my corner would level the playing field, don't you think?"

"A little bit, but I suppose it's better than nothing," Lina said.

"I've been having some back-and-forth with them. Same deal every time," said Jeff. "I'm completely ecstatic whenever I am able to win against them. But their underhandedness, I've come to expect."

"That's not exactly a good thing, is it?" she said. They both paused to take a drink. Lina was nearly half-way done with hers already, while Jeff seemed to be taking his time on his.

"Reason number two I accepted your request," he said, "is because I respect you. I barely know you, and already I know you're more of a hard-worker than those Divas Search girls vying for a spot on the roster. You even said it yourself—they didn't even need to have experience to enter the competition. How is it fair that a couple of non-wrestlers can get closer to being a Diva than someone who's worked her butt off for the last five years for precisely this reason?"

At this, Lina smiled.

"I understand the position you're in. Matt and I had dreamed about being wrestlers back when we were kids. The WWE is something we worked for our whole lives, so I can relate to the desire and want to be a Superstar. You've got heart, kid. I really like that." He smiled at her. She raised an eyebrow at him. At twenty-three years of age, she could hardly be called a "kid." But his words and his kind smile washed a calm over her. It didn't bother her.

"I sincerely appreciate that," she said. She was about to thank him again for signing her, but a deafening roar from the audience suddenly filled the backstage area. People out in the halls started buzzing loudly and ran past the open green room door. Jeff and Lina barely caught a shred of what they were all saying.

"He's back?"

"—Matt Hardy—."

"I didn't see him—."

"His music played!"

At the sound of his brother's name, Jeff bolted out of his seat, using the coffee table to launch himself across the room and raced towards a TV in the corner, muttering things like "What the fuck?" aside to himself under his breath. Lina got up to stand next to him as he hurriedly mashed his hand against the power button and flipped it to the live-circuit channel.

The woman from last week, Lita, was standing in the ring with her fiancée, the tall blond, Edge. There was a priest present, and the ring had been festively decorated. In the middle of the ceremony, Matt Hardy's entrance video and music played, earning a massive collective cheer from the crowd. Lita and Edge looked horrified towards the stage, but a few tense seconds passed and nothing happened. The music died out, and Lita and Edge suddenly broke out into malicious laughter.

"Sorry, I just couldn't resist," said Edge.

Whatever happened after that, Lina would have to find out some other time. As soon as they revealed that Matt Hardy's comeback was actually a pre-meditated prank, Jeff furiously kicked the TV off of its stand, where it hit the floor, crunched and went out. He swung around to the wall and slammed his fists against it, swearing loudly, and rattling the room. He stayed where he was for a while, seething silently to himself. After about a minute, he glanced over at Lina, who was watching him apprehensively.

"Sorry about that," he said quietly, composing himself.

"What was that all about?" she asked, carefully.

"Uh…I guess Lita and Edge are messing with the fans again. I just…it's still a tender issue with me." His voice was low and thick with anger. "I'm so sick of them. It burns me that she used to be our friend, and now neither of them has the decency to care that they're not only hurting my brother, but also me." He straightened up and took a deep breath. "I hope Matt's not watching this right now; I'd hate to go home to a pissed-off Matt."

Lina didn't know if she should be angry about this too. Jeff had already told her not to worry about it, so she suspected asking again what happened would be out of the question. From what he said, she now knew that there was some sort of a "scandal" involved, as he put it. It was probably wrong to go off asking other people what happened. She assured herself that he would tell her if he wanted to.

"Isn't there anything we can do about them?" she asked instead.

"I'd love to, but it's really not my battle to fight," Jeff replied. "Besides, I've got MNM to deal with. If I hadn't thought they were more than I could handle on my own, I'd have gone off to fight Edge a long time ago."

Later, they found out that Jeff didn't even need to fight this battle even if he wanted to. Jeff kicking out the TV hindered them from immediately finding out what happened during the rest of the wedding, but even well after Matt's music had played, the halls were still abuzz with the rest of the ceremony's happenings.

Turns out, Lita's ex-husband Kane, a large bald man who was even taller than Edge, had interrupted the ceremony, emerging from beneath the ring and tried to chokeslam her. Edge managed to get her away from him, so instead, Kane performed a Tombstone Piledriver on their priest. The only part Jeff was angry about was that Lita and Edge got away.

"About a year ago, my brother was feuding with Kane over Lita," he told her. "Matt lost a match against him, and per the stipulations of the match, she had to marry him. I think she even got pregnant with his baby, though I couldn't tell if she was making that up or not. Either way, her friend Gene Snitsky hit Kane with a chair and he fell on her and she miscarried. Last week when you saw them, she was blaming Kane for the miscarriage instead of Gene. So she divorced him shortly after revealing that she had really been in league with Edge."

"She's quite a character," Lina said.

"So is Edge," Jeff replied, darkly. "They deserve each other."

An awkward silence filled the air. It was awkward for Lina anyway, who continued to watch Jeff seethe silently.

"So anyway…" she said. "What's on the schedule for tonight?"

Jeff's face quickly washed over with a much more relaxed complexion. "Well, I'm supposed to introduce you to the WWE Universe tonight. That'll be right before the main event match of the night, so we've got a ways to go until then. Want to do another tour in the meantime?"

She agreed to it, but quickly wished she hadn't. Out in the hallways, all anyone they encountered could do was ask Jeff if he had seen what happened during Edge and Lita's wedding. Jeff's answers were usually short and curt, and Lina could tell he was still raging on the inside.

"Trying to give my intern a fucking tour," Jeff muttered when they were finally alone, "and wouldn't you know it?" He glanced down at her, and she was relieved to see that he was at least grinning, but she knew that he still could have done without all the questions. "I'll be fine, by the way," he added, seeing her expression. "Just trying not to think about it. How are you holding up? Nervous?"

"About tonight? Not really."

"Ever been on TV before?"

"At some higher-end indy promos, but never in front of such a large audience," Lina said. Then she thought for a second. "Yeah, I'm a little nervous."

This tour was even less like a tour than the one he gave her last week. Today he was just pointing out various offices of WWE officials, introducing her to stagehands and other wrestlers, and giving her the run-down of a typical show-day schedule. But more often than not, they would just talk casually.

"So where are you from?"

They were sitting in an interview set just outside of the wrestler's entrance to the ring. People were constantly walking past them, talking loudly. Jeff picked this spot because, due to the chaos and hassle, he thought it was unlikely they would be disturbed.

"Temecula," Lina answered. "In California."

Jeff's eyebrows raised in interest. "You know, everyone seems to glamorize California. How is it actually?"

"You've never been?"

"Only for shows, you know?" he said. "I only get to see the big cities, which is pretty nice. How's the rest of California, though?"

"I'm sure the rest of it is also quite nice," she said, grinning darkly, "but Temecula was a real skinhead city in the eighties. It's pretty nice now, but I grew up during the Hammerskin movement. Hammerskins are like, extreme skinheads, and for whatever reason, they had a chapter in Temecula. It was kind of intense."

He stared at her. "Wow. That's kind of hardcore."

She laughed once. "I think I'm stronger because of it. 'Least, I'd like to think so."

Jeff eyed her warily. "You weren't…involved, were you?"

To his surprise, she laughed. "Of course not. Even if I had wanted to, I was far too young at the time. But I was pretty close to some people who were involved." Her smile faltered. "They were some pretty nice people, aside from the Hammerskin part. I knew a lot of what happened in the movement through these friends. I think they had mentioned to their leader, Travis Miskam, that I'd make a good recruit if I were just a few years older." She gave another dark smile.

"Then what?"

"Well naturally, they tried it in the nineties when I was in my teens. Recruiting me, I mean. Apparently young kids with troubled family lives make the best recruits. I turned them down, and I felt like I had to watch my back after that. Travis and a couple other Hammerskins were arrested in the late nineties following a beat down on a black man who took them to court afterward. The group kind of fell apart after that."

Jeff paused, letting the topic subside. "You said the best recruits were kids with troubled family lives. Do you mean to say that of yourself?"

Lina scratched the back of her head and looked away. "Yeah, uh…my parents and I never really got along, even more so the older I got. They were not behind my wrestling idea at all, and made a point of disowning me after I graduated high school so I could support this crackpot dream of mine on my own."

Jeff laughed. "Crackpot dream?"

"You know, wrestling, not going to college…And getting this, I suppose," she said. With the last sentence, she turned around and pulled her hair over her shoulder, revealing two angel wings tattooed to her shoulder blades in black ink, mostly visible from behind her low-back shirt.

"Not bad," Jeff commented, motioning towards her with his own heavily tattooed right arm.

"So that's pretty much my backstory," she said, turning back around. "Anything else you'd like to know?"

Jeff thought for a moment. "Sure. How 'bout your real name?"

A smile tugged at the corner of Lina's mouth, though it looked more like a grimace than anything else. "Don't have one," she answered shortly.

Jeff furrowed his brow. "What do you mean? Lina Lavigne is your—."

"Lina Lavigne is one of my many aliases," she said. "During my run in the indy circle, I always changed my name before going to the next one. On one occasion, I changed my name probably two or three times while working the same promotion." She paused. "I have trust issues, I'm just going to put it out there. I was disowned by the two people I thought I could count on for anything, by the two people who claimed to love me. My birth name is the name they gave me." She shrugged. "I don't have one anymore."

She was still smiling pleasantly, though Jeff could not think of hearing anything less enjoyable at the moment.

"I generally don't like people," she said.

"Is that why you became a wrestler?" Jeff asked.

"It's part of it," she replied, smiling a little.

A silence hung over them. He didn't know what else to say.

"Jeff, Lina, you're on in two," a stagehand said, approaching them.

"Right," Jeff said quickly, relieved to end the awkward topic. He got up and straightened out the crinkles in his jeans. He looked over at Lina, who was busy fixing her hair in the reflection of the glass on a picture hanging on one of the walls of the set. "You good?"

"Yes," she said, a bit breathless. "I only half had it in my mind that I was going to be debuting tonight when I was getting dressed today, so I'm sorry if my attire is a bit street-ish. First impressions and all—."

"You look fine," he said. "Besides, it's your first match that's the most important first impression." As he was talking, he started moving towards the curtained staircase to the wrestler's entrance.

"Forty seconds—."

"Oh—Jeff!" she said, a bit more edge to her voice. "How are we doing this? I mean, are you going out first and then I follow—?"

"You're coming out with me," he said.

"Is that what he told you?" she asked, gesturing to the stagehand.

"No, I just kind of decided that right now."

"Fifteen seconds—."

She eyed him warily. "Do you know what you're doing?"

He smirked. "Vaguely."

Outside in the arena, Jeff's music hit.

"Shit! Let's go!"

He jumped the staircase and disappeared through the curtain with Lina hot on his heels. As soon as she walked out onto the stage, a deafening roar from the WWE Universe met her ears. A few feet away, Jeff was enthusiastically giving his entrance dance, and Lina tried her best to also move energetically to avoid looking awkward and stationary. The reality of the situation was starting to sink in; it made her head swim and her feet were heavy with anxiety. With some difficulty, she managed to move them down the ramp when Jeff started off towards the ring. The fans, still cheering loudly for Jeff, also began to buzz in curiosity at the sight of the mystery woman accompanying him to the ring.

Jeff jumped onto the ring apron first. Lina, wearing tall wedge shoes, opted to take the set of steps leading up to the ring instead. Jeff pulled the bottom and middle ropes open for her, and, surprised by this gesture, she ducked through them. Another heavy blow struck her as she realized, at long last, she was standing in the ring of the WWE, the ring she had been vying for the last five years. The sheer size of the arena and the vast number of people in attendance was intimidating. Jeff, now inside the ring, jumped up onto the turnbuckles in the corner, drawing another round of cheers from the audience. Unsure of what to do, Lina stayed where she was and applauded him politely.

As Jeff hopped back down to the mat, he took a microphone from a stagehand. "I'd like to address something, if I may…" he began. "As I'm sure you've all noticed by now, I've been in a bit of a rut with Johnny Nitro and MNM. Since April's unpleasantness, I've been somewhat left to fend for myself. Which I'm perfectly capable of doing, don't get me wrong…but when I'm trying to fend against three underhanded cheats, you can imagine problems would arise. Which brings us to my point."

With that, he gestured towards Lina. Lina nodded, again to avoid looking awkward and stationary. "This is Lina Lavigne, and she will be interning for me."

A bit of a murmur arose from a good portion of Jeff's female fanbase.

"I don't expect things to be like how they were back in the days of the Hardy Boyz by doing this. And in fact, I'm not trying to recreate a Hardy Boyz kind of protection at all by bringing her in. If anything, this will merely level the playing field to an appropriate—."

Jeff was abruptly cut off as someone's music hit. Lina looked towards the titantron, which started blaring the letters "MNM." Down on the stage, a woman and two men holding tag team championship belts had emerged. Lina had to admit, that as badly as she had wanted this, she really didn't know what she was getting herself in to. She didn't know most of these people and what they were capable of. She was signed on to help Jeff deal with MNM, but she didn't know their history, she didn't know what kind of people they were. She glanced up at Jeff, uncertain, but he was focused on MNM.

"Well this is all pleasant and sudden, wouldn't you think?" said the front-most man. Lina assumed him to be Johnny Nitro. "It's only been what, two months since your brother left and you're already trying to replace him? And with her? How typical of Jeff Hardy to come out here and try to intimidate us with a false sense of security by showing off his new meat. Don't know if you're aware of this, Jeff, but two on three is still a disadvantage on your part."

"No one is replacing anyone," Jeff shot back, "and I don't need the odds to be even for me to beat you. Because you see, unlike you, I can actually win a match off my own merit and talent."

These words wiped the smile right off of Nitro's face. "Haven't been doing much winning lately though, have you?"

"I would if your Hollywood harlots would stay in the back for once."

Melina and Joey Mercury started to make for the ring, but Nitro held them back. "Well where's the fun in that?" Nitro asked. "If we had it your way every time we fought, I would have no need for Joey or Melina, and you would have just wasted your time signing a useless wannabe Diva intern."

Something flared up in the pit of Lina's stomach. True be it that she had no idea what to expect from the other wrestlers once she joined the WWE, but she did know for certain that she was not about to have spent five years working around financial hardship, educational sacrifice, disappointment, rejection, and steadfast determination only to finally achieve her dream and be called a "wannabe."

Jeff raised the microphone and opened his mouth to defend her, but Lina snatched it out of his hand. All of her nervousness and anxiety vanished; the vastness of the audience dissolved. There was only her and her immediate, smoldering dislike for this flashy, arrogant man. A hush fell over the crowd as she raised the mic and took a few steps closer to the stage.

"Let me show you how useless I am," she said, "and prove that Jeff didn't waste his time on me."

The words were out of her mouth before she had fully realized what she just done. Calmly, Jeff took the microphone back from her. Melina and Mercury exchanged haughtily looks, stifling laughter. Beside them, a triumphant grin spread across Nitro's face.

"I think that can be arranged," he said.

.xXx.

"Right. I uh…wasn't expecting that."

Jeff and Lina were backstage now, currently located in his dressing room. He had invited her to sit down on the couch, but he himself remained standing. He had his hands on his hips and was not looking at her, but rather staring at the floor with a look of slight exasperation.

"Which part?" she asked.

"Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting MNM to come out and interrupt the introductions," he said. "I was essentially calling them out by saying that I signed you to help me take care of them. So I guess, to answer your question, I wasn't expecting you to start issuing challenges so soon."

"Did you expect me to just stand there and let him insult me?" she said, slightly affronted.

"No, I expect you to trust me," he retorted. "I could have taken care of it if you had let me. I just signed you a week ago, Lina. I haven't even begun thinking of how I'm going to train you. Fighting in the indies and fighting in the WWE is a huge difference that I wanted to gradually prepare you for. In case you didn't know, one week isn't a whole lot of time to prepare you for this match, and I doubt if we can even get access to a ring all seven days before next Raw."

"Well I issued a challenge for a tag team match, didn't I?" she said. "I was speaking to Nitro, but I can't very well fight him myself, being a woman and all." She scowled. "If he wants to fight me, he'll need Melina with him."

"I don't know, your wording was kind of vague," he said, musing. "I can clear it up with Bischoff tonight, though, but we've still got our work cut out for us."

There was a long pause. Lina felt like she could really go for a drink right now.

"Jeff, I'm sorry," she said.

Jeff looked up, startled. "Huh?"

"I'm in over my head, and I shouldn't make you bail me out of my stupid mistakes," she said. "I had this problem in the indies, too. I always get too defensive, trying to show people up and maintain dignity. I've just…sacrificed so much to get here, and I don't want it to go to waste."

His expression softened. "Lina, you have years to achieve what you want. You just shouldn't jump in to it right off the bat."

"I don't want to be a typical Diva."

There was another long, startling pause.

"What do you mean?"

"I want to be something bigger, achieve greater things. I want to make the most out of my WWE career, so maybe that way, what I went through to get here would actually be worth it." Her voice was quieter now. "I would love to fight Nitro on my own." She looked up at him and grinned slightly.

Jeff stared. "In due time, maybe. But in the meantime, Nitro isn't really yours to fight." He walked over to the couch and sat down next to her. "You know, during our tours over the last few weeks, I've told you a lot about general rules and the inner workings of the WWE. But there were some things I didn't tell you just yet, because I expected to keep them until our training sessions where they would be more applicable. But all general rules and inner workings aside, there are two other rules that apply strictly to the Superstars and what goes on inside the ring."

He held up one finger. "Rule number one is the safety of the wrestlers above anything else. You fight safely and make wise choices, or you'll pay for it in the end."

He held up another finger. "Rule number two, which I think is just as important as rule one, is that you do not go mixing yourself up in business that is not yours. You end up with a lot more on your plate than you can handle, and usually end up paying for it in the end, too." He grinned. "And I have a feeling that I'll have to keep reminding you of the second rule throughout your WWE career."

She tried to give him an offended look, but ended up smiling.

"I'll do what I can in the time we've been given," he said. "We might be able to get some training time in tomorrow after the ECW show. Wednesday and Friday I'm not sure…we might be able to use the ring again Thursday after Smackdown, too…" He nodded aside to himself. "We'll make it work. I have to admit, you had me going there, when you issued the challenge, you know? But I'm starting to warm up to it."

"I'm glad you see this from my point of view," she said, smiling. As Jeff continued to deliberate in silence, mulling in the increasingly appealing match Lina had set up, her mind wandered back to what Jeff had said about Bischoff. Eric Bischoff, the general manager, must have seen what she had done. What if he thought her too forward and brash after only having been with the company a week?

"Jeff, will I get in trouble for this?" she asked.

He looked at her. "Oh I doubt it," he said, honestly. "Eric's a nice guy, but he's a total sleaze. He'll do anything he thinks will draw ratings."

"Oh," Lina said, slightly put off by this. "That's uh…good to know, I guess."

"Yep…" he said. "So that's pretty much it for tonight. I have to go talk to Eric, but you're free to go if you want."

"I think I'll hang back and watch the fights," she replied.

"'Right." She stood up and he walked her out of the room. "See you for training, then."

And with that, he headed off towards Eric's office. Lina stood where she was for a few seconds before drifting off to find a live-circuit TV, musing to herself and wondering what she had gotten herself in to.

.xXx.

When they next met up the following week for Raw tapings, Jeff revealed to her two things: he had specifically made the match a mixed tag team match, and he would not be formally training her until after tonight.

"So you know the difference between mixed and intergender tag matches, right?" he asked.

Lina shrugged distractedly. "Kind of."

"Well, intergender means the guys can fight the girls," he explained. "Mixed is just guys versus guys and girls versus girls. I don't want you fighting Nitro yet, though I know you want to, so I'm restricting you to mixed matches for right now."

Lina fought to accept the reason for this. "All right. What about my training?"

The two of them had tried to find as much time to use the ring before and after shows as possible to prepare her for the match. They had gotten a good bit of training done, but most of it was going over Nitro and Melina's tactics, telling her to watch out for Mercury, and basic grappling.

"I want to see what you can do before I put together a schedule," Jeff answered. "Tonight's match should be a good demonstration of your in-ring skill. After tonight, it'll be much easier for me to think of what I want to teach you."

They were standing outside the entrance to the stage, both fully dressed for the match. Lina was beside herself in anxiety while Jeff continued to talk like this was all normal. Never before had she been so nervous for a match. She had a firm grip on either of her arms, shaking slightly, while gnawing on her bottom lip with her brows furrowed and staring anywhere but at Jeff. She was about to fight in her first official match as a WWE Diva, the match she had been dreaming about for five years. Not only would she be realizing her dream tonight, but also casting the important first impression Jeff had mentioned last week upon the WWE Universe, and the Superstars.

"Are you okay?" Jeff asked, finally realizing something was off.

Lina nodded wordlessly.

"Hey, look. Look at me," he said firmly. He touched her cheeks with his fingertips, drawing her attention to him. "You'll do fine, okay? I've seen a bit of what you can do in the ring, and if I were worried about how you'll perform tonight, I would have said something, right?"

"You do know how important this is to me, don't you?"

"Yes, I believe I do," he said. "Listen, everyone you've seen, all the Superstars and Divas, they all had a first match in the WWE. And whether they won or lost, they got up, and fought again. I wouldn't call first impressions all that important, really; if you lose, you can always just redeem yourself later. Not that you'll be losing anyway, since you're with me."

He smiled reassuringly at her. She half-smiled back, but her mind was still plagued with the worries and doubts at the root of her anxiety: the thousands in attendance, the millions watching at home, the pressure of approval from the chairman and general manager, the scrutiny of the other wrestlers, and the dire need not to let Jeff down.

In a blurry haze, she was suddenly down at the ring, Jeff's music pounding dully in her ears. The pounding was accentuated by the cheering of the crowd, which she was sure was directed towards Jeff and not herself. She was still shaking slightly, faced with the prospect of either winning or eating her words.

In what seemed to be an unnecessary and taunting bout of slow motion, the stable of MNM made their way down to the ring, with Johnny Nitro and Melina in lead. As they got into the ring, Lina became slightly off-set by the chance that she may have to start the match, showcasing her professional inexperience and lack of training with Jeff. All three members of MNM seemed to be trying to size up and intimidate Lina, but before she had really even noticed, Jeff stepped forward and shoved Joey Mercury backwards. He and Nitro immediately got up in each other's faces, sending a kind of unspoken signal to the Divas that they would be starting the match. Lina climbed through the ropes and onto the ring apron, wondering if Jeff had just read her mind.

Jeff had a fairly decent advantage over Nitro throughout the first half of the match. Twice he had to stop Nitro from tagging out to Melina. A couple times Jeff looked towards Lina, as if considering tagging her in. He was torn between his desire to see what she could do, and knowing that she might not be experienced enough. She had performed fairly well during their training, but she had still been incredibly anxious going into the match. Yet whenever he looked over at her, she looked like she was dying to get the tag.

He obliged her when he landed an offense on Nitro and he retreated to his corner. Nitro was obviously looking to tag out to Melina, and this time, Jeff let him. As Jeff backed himself towards his corner, he held his hand out to Lina without looking at her, and stifled his anxiety. Melina got into the ring and beckoned towards Lina with a smug grin on her face.

"Show her what you've got," he said. Lina smiled.

Jeff had been worried that Nitro would end up making his intern eat her words in her first official WWE match, but his anxiety settled somewhat once Lina jumped into the ring and started dealing the blows right away. Lina was a small woman, of about five-feet-three-inches tall, which Jeff could immediately tell meant for high agility. Melina herself was extremely flexible and agile, and being not too much taller than Lina, it seemed the two of them were pretty evenly matched. Lina wasn't bad for an indy-wrestler-turned-big.

Lina got a little over-eager and ended up getting clotheslined in the face. Melina, having already taken a good deal of offense from her opponent already, tiredly reached down to pull Lina up by her hair. Once standing, Lina broke away from Melina's grip and dropkicked her in the chest. Melina fell hard and ended up near her corner, where Nitro reached in and tagged himself in.

Jeff jumped in as Lina rolled out, not even bothering to wait for her to tag him in. Lina rolled off the apron and onto the floor, where she was not able to see the action going on in the ring. She was sure Jeff was doing great, and in the meantime, used this much needed relaxation time to absorb what was really, finally going on:

I'm in the WWE. I'm in a match in the WWE.

It was still sinking in. Around her, the fans sitting at ringside were cheering, and some of them were actually looking at her and cheering. It was the most exhilarating and surreal thing she had ever experienced.

She suddenly realized that she was still lying on the floor. She grinned, making her way to her knees. She put her arms on the ring apron for support and peered in on the fight. Nitro had managed to turn the tables on Jeff, beating him into the corner. Nitro ducked down and lifted Jeff, sitting him down on the top turnbuckle. Melina went to distract the referee while Joey Mercury, who was outside the ring, went to go hand one of their title belts to Nitro. Lina only barely caught sight of it, because as soon as the referee went off to deal with Melina and Mercury moved towards Nitro, Lina was back in the ring. This was the underhanded cheating tactics of MNM, was it? Jeff was right, and she wasn't surprised.

With the referee's back turned towards her, Lina was able to take Nitro out while Jeff recovered. Nitro noticed her enter the ring and turned away from Mercury before he was able to take the belt from him, but before he had time to react, she kneed him in the stomach, grabbed him by the hair, and threw him onto his back. Melina immediately threw a fit, shoving past the referee to get to Lina, and Lina had a clothesline waiting for her. Melina collapsed and Lina kicked her out of the ring, following her out. Back inside the ring, Jeff had composed himself enough to stand up on the top turnbuckle and swan dive onto a still supine Nitro—

And then the bell rang. Mercury was dragging Melina away from Lina, Nitro was rolling out of the ring, and Jeff was standing victorious inside the ring. His music was playing, and the fans were cheering again. Lina jumped in to the ring, and in a second she and Jeff were hugging. She had fought her first official WWE match and she had won. This was going to take a while to sink in.

"Not bad, kid!" Jeff said, smiling widely. "I saw what you did with Nitro and the distraction. Not bad at all."

"You think so?" she said breathlessly.

"Hey, I signed you to help me take care of MNM, right? You did just that," Jeff replied. "So congrats, Lina! Winning your first WWE match and shutting up Nitro. I knew I didn't sign you for nothing."

She couldn't say anything else. She tried, but the words stuck in her throat. So instead, she let Jeff raise her arms in victory as the fifteen thousand-odd fans in attendance cheered for them while she stood in the home to the grandest stage of them all. The experience was so surreal, so exhilarating.

Her first impression was made. She could only hope that the executives and Superstars alike were as approving of her as Jeff was. She had served her purpose so far and could only hope that this was the first opportunity of many to continue proving to Nitro and MNM that Jeff didn't waste his time on her.

She moved towards the ring ropes as the three members of MNM backed up the ramp towards the stage. Eyes set firmly on Nitro, she pointed directly at him. She didn't say anything; she didn't need to. She wanted everyone to know that she was going to get her hands on him sooner or later. If he didn't get the message now, no matter. He'll find out in due time.

But in the meantime, Lina was just going to enjoy herself.

End Chapter 2

You know, I had decided that she was going to be from Temecula LONG before I found out that it was all up in skinheads in the eighties (found that out recently from watching the show Gangland). I've actually been to Temecula, and it is pretty nice. Also, I live in California. It's really not as nice as everyone glamorizes it to be :D
also, sorry this took so long to update. Also sorry if it seemed like a lot/too much happened in this chapter. I tried to space it out, but maybe the story would be way too long if I tried to do that. I'll try to be more organized with the next chapter.
Reviews, please!