We Are The Queen

The Queen sat upon her throne among her council. Ever since the majority left, all she’s had is her three most trusted companions. Friends even. Being new-era symbiotes, their names weren’t quite like Venom or Carnage. No, they had titles. Roles. The Man, ironically, was The Queen’s main companion. Best friend, even though she’d never admit it. Then there were the inseparable pair of The Hugger and The Boss. They never went anywhere without each other. They made a good team, the four of them. It was apparent that the three were talking to her, but all the voices just mixed into a confusing jumble. Just as it seemed like the voices began to separate, The Queen could hear loud booms of explosions. She could clearly hear screams of her people. The 4 glanced at each other without a word, darting out of the throne room to find the cause of the chaos.

“Charlie. Charlotte..” Becky lightly shook Charlotte’s sleeping body awake. With heavy eyelids, Charlotte took in the sight before her: Becky Lynch holding her with the worst case of bedhead. Charlotte couldn’t help but smile as her stomach twisted in a painful knot.

“Hey sleepy head. We gotta head to the labs in a little bit.” The labs? Weren’t the labs the enemy? Why would they go back? “I know what you’re thinkin’ but Stephanie says it’s mandatory and we don’t wanna raise any suspicion, do we?” That made sense.

“Lovebirds! Get your asses moving!”

“Sasha!”

“When did the other two get here?” Charlotte wiped the sleep from her eyes and reluctantly sat up, ignoring Sasha’s comment. She really did not wanna leave the bed. “Oh, not that long ago, just 6am maybe?”

“6am!? What time is it?”

“About 7 now.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up.”

Truth be told, I was sleepin’ too. You got quite the comfy bed.”

“Oh my God! We get it, just get your asses moving already!” Sasha barged into the room with Bayley hot on her trail profusely apologizing for their friend’s rudeness. Becky chuckled, which soon became a hearty laugh and, just like before, the whole group was laughing along with her.

Charlotte and Becky got ready rather quickly. Becky had to borrow Charlotte’s clothes, which were slightly oversized but worked nonetheless. Charlotte, still not having the will to get ready, hastily pieced together an outfit of jeans and a white t-shirt; nothing too outrageous. However, when Becky walked out, Charlotte could feel her heart pounding in her throat. She was wearing a black pair of jeans (that she had to cuff at the ankles), Charlotte’s ACDC tank top, her snapback and her leather jacket.Charlotte never thought her clothes could look so much better on someone else.

I must say, Charlotte. This girl is quite the catch.

Charlotte tried to push the voice to the back of her head. She really did not wanna deal with this right now.

“Can we go now?” Sasha whined from Charlotte’s bed.

“Yes, Sasha, we can go.”

“Finally!” Sasha sprung up from the bed, pulling Bayley along with her.

“So, who wants to ride with me?” Charlotte looked at the three with a smirk. She knew that Sasha and Bayley liked her bike, but she was really holding out for Becky to volunteer.

“I’ll go.” Sasha quickly piped up. Damn, maybe next time.

“Drive safely, Char!” Bayley called after them as the two mounted the bike. Charlotte kicked the engine, and the duo were soon speeding down the road. Charlotte felt Sasha grip her waist, just like Becky had, but it didn’t feel the same. Charlotte didn’t feel warm or giddy. Charlotte didn’t feel the comfort of Becky’s toned arms holding her for dear life. It wasn’t the same and that scared Charlotte. She wasn’t supposed to feel like this ever again. Not after Daria. Not after how she had been hurt before.

Charlotte killed the engine when she pulled into an empty spot in the lot. Bayley’s SUV wasn’t there yet, so it looked like it was just going to be her and Sasha for a bit.

“Now, I don’t know you all too well yet, Charlotte, but I’d say after what we’ve been through this week makes us close friends.” Charlotte couldn’t disagree with Sasha. They had broken in and stolen a person from a lab together, you can’t exactly get casual coffee after that.

“Close friends give each other advice, right?”

I suppose.”

“Cool, so I’ll give you mine. You seem pretty close to Bex despite the fact that y’all just met. Y’know she’s my best friend, besides Bayley. So I’ll tell you this, I’ve known her for maybe 6 months now, and I see the way she looks at people, and she doesn’t look at no one like she looks at you. Hell, the Becky I know wouldn’t have stayed with any girl two nights in a row.”

“We aren’t together, though.”

“Regardless of whatever is or isn’t going on between the two of you, please, don’t break her heart.”

“I would never, Sash. At least not on purpose.”

“I know you wouldn’t but it’s the mandatory ‘break her heart and I break your face’ best friend speech.” Charlotte nodded with a smile.

“I’ll give that talk to Becky too, by the way. You’re one of us now.”

One of us. Charlotte liked that.

Sasha Banks. She seems very wise, like one of my friends. I must admit, although I hate them, they’ve found stellar hosts.

Friends? Whoever this voice is has friends? Charlotte hoped those friends were still sane. Just as soon as the voice had come, the sound of a car pulling into the lot greeted her ears. Charlotte found herself grinning as soon as she saw the fiery head of orange hair appeared from the car.

“What took you so long, slowpokes?”

“We’re not slow! Charlie just speeds through all o’ the way here.”

“Charlotte, you know you shouldn’t speed! What if you get caught!?”

“Good, you’re all here. Please, follow me inside, we have some business to discuss.”  Charlotte grew rigid when she heard Stephanie’s voice. I wonder if she knew it was them. Maybe when they walked in they’d have the riot squad ready to attack. Despite all of their discomfort, the four girls followed Stephanie into the building. Charlotte, much to her disliking, was the first to follow Stephanie.

Once they were safely inside the building and the door was shut, Stephanie broke the silence. “So, I think we should address the elephant in the room.”

“Hey, I may’ve bulked up a bit but I’m no elephant. I’m like, a bull or somethin’.”

“Not you, Rebecca. The labs were broken into two nights ago. One or our experiments was stolen from us.” The word experiment cut Charlotte deep. Paige was a person, and from what Charlotte knew of her, she was a damn good one at that. Was that all they were to McMahon Labs? Experiments?

“Really? How did they get in?” Sasha feigned concern quite well. Charlotte was impressed.

She really is just like her. I’m pleased.

Apparently the voice was impressed, too.

“We’re assuming that a team of thieves worked together and took out our security systems.”

“I’m sorry, Steph. What does that mean for us then?” Becky’s voice was high-pitched. Well, more than usual. Her usual confidence oozing voice was taken over by uncertainty. Charlotte felt uneasy too, now.

“I think you know exactly what it means, Rebecca.”

The room became silent. The four girls exchanged worried glances with each other. Bayley’s face was contorted in the most heartbreaking frown Charlotte had ever seen. She almost felt guilty, like it was her fault for upsetting Bayley.

“I cannot believe the four of you! You broke into our labs and stole our specimen!”

“Given that I’m out of practice and I picked the door like it was a diary lock, it wasn’t that hard.” Sasha snarked. Bayley gave her friend’s stomach a quick whack.

“Paige wasn’t just an experiment, Stephanie. Is that all we are to McMahon Labs?”

“It doesn’t matter what you are to us anymore, Charlotte. After the stunt you pulled, there is no getting out of Project NXT whatsoever.”

“W’dya mean? We saw what ya did to Paige. Ain’t no way we’re stickin’ around.” Becky piped up. Charlotte saw a glint in Becky’s eyes. Almost a glint of fear. It was obvious that she was trying to act tough, but she was scared. Charlotte wanted nothing more than to scoop Becky up and wash away any fear she had.

“You don’t have a choice. See, you may think you weren’t seen, but we have multiple angles of Sasha breaking in, Becky and Charlotte vandalizing our equipment, and Bayley driving away with our property. So, if the four of you would like to stay out of prison or save yourself from much worse fates, I would stay compliant.”

“Is that a threat, McMahon?” Sasha stepped up to Stephanie’s towering figure. She sure never knew when to keep quiet. Bayley tried holding her back, but it was obviously to no avail.

“It’s much worse, Miss Banks.” Stephanie gave her a pat on the head and addressed the rest of the group. “Now, since the four of you’ve derailed our plans, I will explain to you what we’re actually doing here, though, Charlotte may have a better idea than the four of you.”

She’s onto us Charlotte. Do you have a plan to get us out of this?

Us? What do you mean ‘us’, we are NOT a team. Charlotte replied to the voice. God, she really was going insane. Why was she even replying to it?

“Fine, explain. I have no idea what you mean or what’s going on, but be my guest, Miss McMahon.”

“I wouldn’t get snarky with me if I were you, Charlotte. As I was saying, there is a lot I have to explain. I suppose I should start with the project. Project NXT’s main goal is to figure out a solution to sustainable life on other planets. So, when McMahon labs launched the probe, our goal was to find any signs of life. Boy, did we hit the jackpot. We discovered what we’ve been looking for for ages: Klyntar. Now, the origins of the planet are unknown to us at the moment. However, after the probe had returned, and we found that the Life Foundation had also retrieved life forms from Klyntar. Most notably, Venom came from Klyntar. Our original plan was to lure Eddie Brock into helping us, but that proved to be in vain with his destruction of the Life Foundation.”

“Hold up, Eddie Brock is Venom? The reporter dude?”

“Yes, Sasha, Eddie is Venom, but that is unimportant further on. So, we borrowed some information from The Life Foundation’s archives, how we acquired it is confidential. So mid-2019 we sent our best to capture as many specimen as we could. Well, actually from the archives we learned their names to be symbiotes. We found that extremely loud sounds or extremely high frequency sound waves can shock the symbiote, and even cause it to separate from its host. So we created frequency bombs to disorient the symbiotes enough to encase them, much like they did at the Life Foundation. When we arrived to Klyntar, however, we found that most of the symbiotes from Venom’s generation were completely gone. All we saw were ‘new age symbiotes’, if you will. Upon further examination, these new-age symbiotes were stronger, faster, smarter, and more civilized than that of the previous generation’s. The symbiotes developed a hierarchy and civilization. Every symbiote had a role.”

“We got straight to work. We threw out as many bombs as we could and funneled as many symbiotes into the chambers as possible. At first, we were very happy with our results. There were a few stragglers, but we were satisfied with what we had. The we saw them. They ran at us with their full might, towering over the crew. The four of them wreaked havoc on our crew before we could even set off a bomb….”

Stephanie watched as these four symbiotes tore through her research crew. Each of them had a distinct, different look. The tallest one had royal blue streaks all throughout her lengthy body. Speaking of her body, it pooled out from her back, creating a sort of train behind her body that seemed to connect to some sort of a tall spiked plume on the back of its neck. Finally, atop her grotesque head, were three points resembling a crown. The one next to her was covered in orange with some black splotches here and there. She looked like there were gears etched into every joint of her body, almost like a machine. The tall one and the orange one seemed to work together in perfect devastating sync. A good amount of distance from them were the two others. One of them was tall, not like the one in front of Stephanie, but still tall. This one had streaks of a rosey gold and deep turquoise flowing through her. Out of her head came a tall lock of goop with the same colors. Fighting alongside was a much smaller symbiote who was decked out in sparkling gold and deep purple. On her hands were what looked like golden rings.

Once almost all of the crew had been thinned out, all four of them approached Stephanie.

“W-Who are you?”

“We are The Queen’s Court.” The tallest one spoke, her voice oozing royalty and confidence.

“Good to know.” Stephanie turned to  the source of the voice to see that her husband, Hunter, had thrown a bomb in their direction. Stephanie scrambled out of range as soon as she could. She watched as the symbiotes melted into this sort of puddle, just as all the others had. Stephanie quickly encased them and they were off back to earth.

“And just as quick and intelligent and strong as they were, they were also incredibly picky. The hosts had to be perfect for these new-age symbiotes. So, we did a bit of digging and we found Becky, Paige, Bayley, and Sasha. When we met those four, we realized we had to find out who they were. The Court, of course, weren’t so compliant. So, we got help from one of the others we managed to bring back: The Architect. We had one of our bodyguards, Tyler, be his host. It was a perfect fit, we must say. The Architect informed us that the names of The Court were as follow: The Queen, The Hugger, The Boss, and The Man. Originally, we had Paige paired with The Queen, Bayley with The Man, Sasha as The Hugger, and Becky as The Boss.”

Horrible first picks, to be frank. Now, Paige wasn’t too bad, but not as good as you, Charlotte.

“But as we worked with you we realized we had to change things around with you three for everything to work. So, Bayley became The Hugger, Sasha took The Boss, and Becky was The Man.”

That is much better. They’ll be quite satisfied to have their new hosts.

“Now, obviously, things didn’t work out with Paige and The Queen. Unfortunately, we had to leave them together for two months until we could find a replacement, and when we did, we were overjoyed. Charlotte was our perfect candidate for a certain symbiote: The Man. We were going to transfer The Queen to Becky and dispose of Paige, but that obviously didn’t work out and now we’re here. Any questions?”

“Yeah, I have a question, Stephanie.”

“Go ahead Bayley.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not a question. Now, since you have no choice, we’ll start bonding the rest of you with your symbiotes next week. Sound good?”

“I mean, no, but it’s not like we got a choice or anythin’.”

“I have some conditions.” Charlotte piped up. Suddenly regaining some sort of confidence. The Queen had picked her. She picked Charlotte. That had to have meant something.

“You don’t really get conditions but humor me. What are your requests?”

“I have 2. One, you give us a job. The four of us are out of jobs right now. Give us a business, something to run like a coffee shop or some shit. More importantly, all business expenses will be on you.”

“Will that keep the four of you out of trouble?”

“Of course, Steph. Why would we ever get in any trouble?” Becky quips. Sasha stifles a  laugh. “Then fine.”

“Good. Number two, you pay for my brother’s funeral and all costs that it involves. Everything. He deserves to go out with a bang, regardless of who pays for it.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Then we have a deal.”