#w:felix

[natusvincere]

Lois Lane Reporting Live|| Felix and Vic

Timing: About a week ago Location: The Grit Pit Partings: @recoveringdreamer and @natusvincere Summary: Vic has somehow come up with the idea that the Grit Pit is operating as a secret underground ring to harm vampires, Felix becomes the unfortunate victim of her investigation. Warnings: N/A

Felix had been… employed by the Grit Pit for some time now. They’d fallen into the routine of it, even if they wanted, more than anything, to get out. They knew the people who were there regularly, from the frequent spectators with their loud voices and angry words to the upper management and their cruel games. More than anything, though, Felix was familiar with the other fighters. They’d faced most of them in the Pit at one point or another, and the ones they hadn’t fought, they’d seen in the locker room often enough to recognize them on sight. Most of them didn’t bother with small talk or getting to know one another — it made things a lot easier if you weren’t friendly with the people who you might be asked to brutally beat at any given moment — but Felix recognized them all pretty well. Even newer fighters were typically paraded around by someone proud of having trapped someone new, even if the fighter in question was still unaware of how binding their contract was. 

So it was a little weird that Felix didn’t recognize the woman standing in the locker room tonight. 

She wore thick-rimmed glasses, though Felix wasn’t sure if there was actually a lens in them. She held a notebook and was dressed in a smart suit. She looked like a cartoon of a stereotypical journalist, and it put them on edge just a little. Strangers in the locker room were never great, but strangers who looked like they might start asking questions were worse. Ducking their head, Felix did their best to slide by the stranger without attracting any attention.

Victoria was not a stranger to violence.  In her over three centuries on the Earth, she had seen more than her fair share of it, even before she was undead.  Her own death and turning (and subsequent years after as a baby vampire) were full of particularly violent memories as well, despite how much she wished to forget them.  But violence, and all that came with it, were never something she enjoyed.  She couldn’t understand why people would come to a place like the Grit Pit, where fighters were paid to be screamed at and beat the shit out of one another.  It seemed extremely barbaric and inhumane.  Over time, she had convinced herself that there had to be something more going on there.  Somehow, she now believed that it must have been a front for something even more nefarious than just overt violence- was this part of a larger trick to destroy vampires?  One that she had missed back when she was on the wrong side of morality when it came to the beasts?

She wasn’t sure.  If she were more of an objective person, she might have been able to step back and see that this sort of conclusion was not a logical one to jump to.  But her determination to be a better person had been having its way of superseding logic altogether lately, which is how she had ended up at the Grit Pit with a fake journalist pass and a mission to out them for their ways altogether.

“Hey you!”, she called to the person seemingly avoiding her eye contact.  She had watched them hesitate in their fight multiple times mere moments before- maybe they were just the person she needed to get to the bottom of whatever was going on here. She tried her best to hide any hint of Sweden in her accent, which still seemed to peak through despite speaking English for hundreds of years. Her attempt at a ‘journalist’ accent was somewhere between Brooklyn and Australian. “I’m workin’ on a beat for Wicked’s Rest Times.”  Did the town even have a working newspaper?  “About thriving local businesses.  Why don’t you sit down and tell me about how you came to work for this fine establishment?”

They’d never been particularly lucky. Their entire life seemed to be a reflection of that very simple fact, shining through so brightly that it was blinding. From their mother’s death to their father’s overwhelming grief to Leo’s manipulation to the Grit Pit, Felix’s life seemed to be a snowball of bad luck rolling down a hill, growing larger and larger with each inch of ground it gained. So of course they couldn’t avoid the attention of the stranger in the locker room. Of course she’d call out to them specifically in an accent that was… strange and hard to pin down. They shouldn’t have been surprised about it in the slightest.

They tried to pretend not to hear her, tried to hurry the process of shoving their things into their duffel, but the luck that had never been on their side before didn’t seem keen on running to meet them now. They dropped a sock on the ground, leaned down to pick it up only to knock their duffel over and spill the contents on the floor of the locker room, effectively trapping them for the amount of time it would take to clean it all up. That gave the woman — the journalist, because of course she was a journalist — plenty of time to approach them. Felix tried to suppress a groan.

What was she asking about? Thriving local businesses? Was that what the Grit Pit was? The reminder of their contract’s nondisclosure clause churned in their gut, and they shook their head quickly. “Um, no, sorry, I don’t — I mean, I don’t have a lot of time. I have, uh, somewhere else to be right after this, and I’m not very good at talking to people anyway, so you probably don’t want to interview me. Um, there’s a guy over that way who might be able to answer your questions, I bet.” They gestured vaguely to where Wyatt had disappeared, feeling a little guilty for throwing him under the bus but knowing he’d be better at getting rid of the journalist, anyway.

—

This person must have been nervous.  Clothes were tumbling from their bag before they even had a chance to muster a response, and Vic glanced down at them before she stepped closer to her interviewee.  There was a small part of her that felt bad that they were nervous, but a bigger part that reveled in it.  Nerves put people on edge, and Vic knew from experience that people on edge were more prone to spilling their guts.  In the least literal way, of course. Even if the information they gave her was miniscule, Vic was hopeful whatever she got out of them would leave her closer to rescuing vampires from whatever was going on at the Grit Pit.  Ignoring their protests and their gesture to someone unknown behind her, she held out her hand for them to shake. 

“The name’s Missy Spitz.”  Believe it or not, Vic had come up with that alias hours before.  No one would trace anything back to her if this person came up with any good juice.  “You know, an employer isn’t allowed to keep you from talking to the press, nor are they able to retaliate for information released.”  She wondered if her lies would cost this person their job.  Perhaps they’d find something upstanding and nonviolent instead.  Maybe this would work out well for everyone.  

“This won’t take too long.  I just need to know a bit more about your employer and I’ll be on my merry way.”  As if to show how unthreatening she was, Vic leaned down, picking up one of the fallen shirts and helping to fold it.  It was stinky and sweaty, and although she folded it neatly, she pinched two fingers together to hand it over.  “Now, how long have you been working for the Grit Pit?”

—

Her hand was directly in front of him, and Felix was a little too polite not to reach out and shake it, even if they had no real desire to continue the conversation. They glanced back towards where Wyatt had disappeared to, but he’d already exited the locker room and seemed to have no plans of returning. Felix did another quick sweep, hoping to find some familiar face to rescue them, but it was no use. It wasn’t a full moon, which meant Samir wasn’t around, and most of the other fighters didn’t talk to him. Even if they did, it seemed everyone else had already dispersed. No one seemed keen on hanging around the locker room too long when the night was over, especially not when some stranger was there asking questions. Felix was on their own here.

“That’s not your name,” they blurted, then immediately regretted the outburst. “Sorry. I mean, maybe — maybe that is your name. But it doesn’t really sound like a real name. I don’t know anyone named Missy Splitz. I don’t even think Splitz is a name. Missy is a name, maybe, but it’s more of a nickname. Isn’t it? Is, um, is your name something else, and people just call you Missy? Or did you choose the name Missy? It’s not a bad name. I think it’s fine. I just don’t think — I’m not — Um.” 

Maybe this would work in their favor. If Felix couldn’t convince the reporter to leave by asking, maybe they could make conversation so incredibly awkward that she’d choose to go away just to get out of it. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would happen quickly, however. She began making claims that an employer couldn’t make you not talk to the press, and Felix let out an awkward, uncomfortable laugh. An employer, he wanted to say, could make you do a lot of things when that employer was something like the Grit Pit. But just thinking the words made their tongue burn, either because of the contract or because of some mental block their mind had created to protect them from it. 

Still stuffing their clothes into their bag, Felix avoided eye contact. “I really, um, I’m sorry, but I don’t — I don’t really have a lot of time to talk. I have to go home to feed my cat. She has to eat at the same time every night, or else she gets mad. And I don’t — I don’t want her to be mad at me, so I’ve gotta… I really can’t stay. Sorry, uh, Miss Splitz. Missy Splitz. Are you sure that’s your name?”

—

Vic put her hand on her chest, feigning shock and offense at the person’s declaration.  “Excuse me?”, she said, accusatory and flushed.  “It’s Missy Spitz.  Not Missy Splitz.  And I sincerely hope you didn’t just insult my reputable mother and my extremely loving and attentive father, who are both alive and well, by insulting the name they gave me when they laid their eyes upon my small, newborn face.”  She worried, for a moment, that she was taking this character too seriously, but that moment was brief.  “Missy. Spitz.”, she said, interrupting them with finality.  “No nicknames, no jokes, just a given name.  It’s generational, actually. Passed down… from my mother’s side.  I’m the 17th Missy Spitz in my family.”

She didn’t need their eye contact to win them over, all she needed was for them to give her the information before someone more important caught her back here.  She adjusted her fake press pass she had made, hoping he realized she meant business.  “Your cat can wait.  It’s important for children and animals to experience age-appropriate uncomfortable emotions, so that they’re better equipped to process them.  It helps with a trusted adult guiding the way, of course, but your cat can wait.  The skinny on the hooey?  It needs to be spilled now.”  Years ago, she read a book about a journalist who used that term.  Thank goodness for her extensive research.  

Again, this person was insulting Vic’s pretend name.  She was starting to get for-real offended, instead of just in-character.  “You cannot seriously be throwing around such raucous accusations when you yourself have yet to even tell me your name.  How am I meant to write a proper report without your name?  Go on, fighting-person.  Tell me your name, so I can mock you as well.”

—

“Oh! I, um, sorry! I thought — I thought you said Splitz.” Felix turned bright red, hands trembling a little as they continued stuffing things into their duffel with a desperate speed. This, of course, caused its own issues; the trembling made it hard to get things into the bag properly, and more items were dropped and picked up and dropped again. “I’m not — I wasn’t, uh, insulting anyone. Especially not your parents! I was just, um, you know, it’s not — I haven’t heard that name before. I just — I was curious if you chose it yourself or not. I know, you know, a few people who have chosen their own names, and I think it’s cool. I don’t think I’d be able to choose my own name. I’d get overwhelmed, because there’s so many names out there. Like, where do you start? Right? But it’s cool, uh, that your parents named you Missy when — when you were a baby. And it’s cool that it’s a family name! Do you, um, did your dad… take your mom’s last name, then? If it’s from your mom’s side? I think that’s cool, too. I think it’s weird how people expect a woman to take her husband’s last name, but not the other way around. Right?” 

They were hoping the cat excuse would get them out of this, but Felix had never been particularly lucky. The journalist — Missy Spitz, not Missy Splitz — was adamant, and Felix was bad at saying no even when they couldn’t say yes. Their eyes darted to the door of the locker room, though they weren’t sure if they were hoping for another fighter to come in and take Missy’s attention or a higher up from the Pit to come yell at her to go. Both options seemed cruel in one way or another. Missy earning a spot on the Grit Pit’s radar was a bad thing, and wishing for another fighter to be put in an uncomfortable position like the one Felix was in now seemed mean spirited. But Felix wasn’t equipped to handle this, and they knew it. “I don’t — I don’t have any… skinny on the hooey. Honest. I just, um, I’m just trying to go home.”

Wincing as she claimed they were insulting her again — they really hadn’t meant to! — Felix kept their gaze trained on the duffel that they’d more or less given up on packing. Their hands were shaking so much now that the bag’s zipper was banging absently against the bench every so often, the hollow thunk seeming to echo through the empty locker room. “I don’t — I don’t really think you should write a report. There’s a lot of cooler things to report on! Have you seen the leg? You should write a report on the leg!”

—

It was almost comical how the clothing kept falling in the bag as the Wildcat was trying to load it up.  If Vic really worked for the newspaper, she might have drawn a silly comic of the sight  Missy Spitz was a professional, though, so she had to find a way to stifle her amusement.  “I’ve never heard anyone call their child ‘Wildcat’ either, but you don’t see me questioning you, now do you?”  She kind of liked this strange, anxious groveling the fighter was doing, and she smirked with a weird sense of power as they continued to fawn.  Yes, she was important.  Yes, this person should be worried about how they made her feel.  Is this how CEOs felt?  Maybe once Rosie was grown up, Vic would try her hand at being a CEO.  She would only hire grovelers of course, and people who didn’t like pineapple on pizza.

Wildcat’s question threw her off, and actually made her drop her smug, satisfied look.  She hadn’t thought of that little detail when she made up the lie about 7 generations.  “Oh, of course!  My very loving, feminist father didn’t dare dream of asking his wife to take his name.  He even made our beds every morning.  I had a lovely childhood.”  Vic was starting to feel sort of jealous of Missy Spitz and this fantastical life she led.  “It’s unequivocally weird.  Society is not as forward thinking as it assumes it is.”

“The leg is not a thriving small business.  What good would that do my reputable article?”, Vic accused, now feeling annoyed.  Wildcat wasn’t giving answers, and their eyes were shifting anywhere but Vic’s, seemingly looking for an out, so she knew it was time to pull out the big guns.  Like the paparazzi did in hollywood.  No more asking if she could ask questions, she just needed to ask them loudly until she got an answer.  “Do you have any comments on the rumor that the Grit Prit is just a front for more nefarious ongoings, including the planned harm and destruction of specific groups of people that occupy this town?”, she asked, holding an invisible microphone near his face. It felt more official, somehow.

—

“Well, that’s a nickname! It’s not on my driver’s license. Which — Which is a valid driver’s license, by the way. It doesn’t expire for another year.” They weren’t sure why that felt important to add. In all honesty, Felix was floundering. They felt like they were in trouble, and they didn’t want to be. “Um, is Missy a nickname? Is it short for — Missandra?” They wanted the conversation to stay away from the reason she’d come here, even if that was probably impossible. Felix wasn’t enough of a wordsmith to properly distract someone from their intended conversation. Felix was barely enough of a wordsmith to carry on any conversation at all. 

At least Missy Spitz, like most people, didn’t mind talking about herself. That was a nice way to distract people, sometimes. Felix liked to think it made them happy, too. People liked sharing little facts about themselves, like the fact that their families had nice fathers who took their mothers’ surnames and made the bed without asking. Felix tried to swallow the envious feeling at the idea of Missy Spitz’s father, who had probably never sent them into the woods with a shovel and a corpse and refused to let them back in the house until the grave was filled in entirely. “That’s cool. Your dad sounds really cool. What, uh, what’s his name?” 

The conversation was spiraling, getting away from Felix in a way they didn’t know how to control. The leg wasn’t what Missy Spitz wanted to talk about. Missy Spitz’s forward-thinking, feminist family wasn’t what Missy Spitz wanted to talk about. Felix’s inability to get their sock to stay in their duffel wasn’t what Missy Spitz wanted to talk about. Missy Spitz wanted to talk about the Grit Pit, and Felix didn’t. Their heart picked up its pace as she asked a particularly hard-hitting question, their stomach churning. They felt sick, felt uneasy, and they didn’t know how much of that was the contract and how much of that was them. These days, that was something that happened a little too often. “I think I left my stove on! I really need to go turn off my stove. I’m sorry I thought your name was Missy Splitz!”

—

Oh.  That made way more sense.  Of course they would use nicknames in a seedy place like this.  Vic should have known.  This just pointed to more nefarious activities at the Grit Pit.  She wrote the word ‘fraud’ with a sad face in her little notebook, the first note she had jotted down since she’d arrived.  “So what’s your real name, then?  Does it worry you to utter your real name in earshot of your controlling boss, or is that anxiety I’m picking up on about something else?”  She paused, though not because she realized the irony that she was faking her own name, just like the wildcat, but to come up with a believable answer to his question.  “It’s short for Misandry, actually”, she deadpanned.  She wanted to smirk so bad, because that was funny, but instead, she just stared at them.

The mention of her father took all the joy out of her mind.  Although, she supposed Wildcat wasn’t asking about her father, they were asking about Missy’s.  Misdandry’s.  “His name?  His name is Franklin Delano Spitz.  Although most people lovingly refer to him as D-man.  He’s very jolly too, you see?  I’m sure he’d disapprove of whatever is going on here too, but I wouldn’t want to worry a sweet, old man with the likes of this.”

Journalists lied all the time, right?  Vic wondered how far of a lie she could tell without the whole situation becoming a bit ethically gray.  Was it wrong to let this person think that wonderful fathers like Franklin Delano Spitz existed in this cruel world?  Wildcat seemed to be going through a sort of moral crisis on their own, too, and Vic was beginning to wonder if she was pushing this too far.  Sure, she hadn’t gotten too much information about the Grit Pit yet, but the confirmation that something else was going on was the definite first step she needed to pursue this further.  “Well that was irresponsible of you.  Don’t you have a neighbor you can call to check it before you get there?”  Even with her harsh words, Vic finally allowed some distance between herself and the fighter, closing her one note notebook in the process.  “Listen.  I’d hate for you to start a fire just because you stuck around for an interview.  I think I have all I need.  Unless… there’s anything else you think might be valuable?”

—

They debated whether or not it was wise to give a journalist their real name, conflict rising in a way they hated. It wasn’t fair not to, was it? Missy Spitz had given Felix her real name, complete with its origin and a brief family history. Wouldn’t it be cruel to deny her the bare minimum in response. “Um, I’m — My name is Felix,” Felix said, stomach churning with doubt the moment the name was out. Did she have a point? Should they be worried about saying their name to a reporter where their bosses might hear? Felix had heard rumors that fae could take someone’s name — what if that was the punishment for this? Their eyes darted towards the door that led to the offices, their palms sweaty. They needed to get out of her before they really messed up. “Oh, Misandry is a beautiful name,” they muttered, afraid to comment anything else.

“D-Man. That’s cool. I like it when people have nicknames.” They felt another wave of guilt at the idea that they were doing something to upset Missy’s father, though they didn’t know the man at all. Disappointing fathers was something Felix had some experience in, but they didn’t think it was the sort of thing made easier by experience. “Oh, I don’t think he should be worried. Everything’s fine!” It wasn’t. Nothing was fine. Felix felt like they might be sick.

They shook their head quickly, deciding to cling to their flimsy excuse of a stove being left on. “No, I — I don’t have any neighbors. I, um, I’m a — a hermit. I live, uh, out in the woods.” Well, not anymore, though they wouldn’t say that to Missy. They needed to remove themself from this conversation before it became too late to do so. “I’m — I’m pretty irresponsible. I’m working on it, I’m trying to be better.” That wasn’t a lie. Felix knew they needed to improve on… more than one aspect of their life. But they wanted to be better. They really did. “No,” they muttered, looking down at their bag again. “I’m — I don’t have anything valuable. I’m sorry.”

—

“Felix”, said Vic, nodding in absolution.  Felix the Wildcat.  It was as solid of a name as any. She pretended to write it down in her notebook, although their name was never what she was after, just the information they could have provided.  She hoped they wouldn’t be too disappointed when they never ended up featured in a newspaper article.  Maybe she could write a fake one and send it to them, just in case.  “Thank you”, she said.  “My ancestors 17 generations ago thought the same thing.”  She wondered what kind of life Rosie might have if she went around with a first name like Misandry.  Either really horrible, or absolutely fantastic, probably.

“Oh, so does he.  He loves anything fun, and indulged in my hobbies as a child.”  Maybe she should write a children’s book about this fictional Misandry and her wonderful parents.  Her life seemed fascinating.  Poor Felix still looked like they were going to pass out, though, so she decided to stop fantasizing and pay more attention to the task at hand.  She knew all the first aid she needed to for a 3-year-old, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to revive an adult.  Maybe all that fighting was getting to their head after all.

“Go”, she said, shooing them away with one hand and using the other to put her notebook in her pocket. “Before you make your hermit village into a forest fire and cause another travesty in this wild town.”  She reached down to grab a last discarded shirt, placing it in their hand before they had a chance to leave.  “And Felix?  Don’t you worry.  With a little hard work, we can all overcome irresponsibility and solitude.”  Vic was proof of that, if only Felix knew the real her.  “Don’t worry.  Your secrets are safe with me.”  With that, she tipped her makeshift journalist hat, smirking as she watched Felix scurry away.  Maybe she didn’t get a ton of information about the Grit Pit like’d wanted, but she knew Missy Spitz work as a journalist was far, far from over.

[lq-lmh]

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[lq-lmh]