Description: After some persuasion and convincing, Chloe takes a visit to upstart Brute Force Wrestling. Will she take up the offer laid on the table for her, or will it all fall through?
A while back, Chloe had a rather... significant Neo League match against Rainbow Mika. Not significant in the context of Neo League, though it had been a pretty good match and drawn a large audience, but because of what she'd done in it; she'd let what she thought of as her 'monster side' take over, if only for a while.
And then she vanished.
Nobody is entirely sure where Chloe went or what she did for those couple weeks, but a couple days ago she called the number she'd been given and indicated she was ready to talk. That is, presumably, why she came all the way here from her current home (such as it is) in Metro City.
Chloe cannot dress up for a meeting like this because she owns very few clothes and none of them are really dressy, as such. She tried, a little; her pants are better than jeans, and her shirt buttons up instead of being a T-shirt. Most of it isn't visible because she is wearing a long coat (it hides the tail, and it's chilly out), though she's left it partially unbuttoned to show the yellow top she has on.
Her eyes, if anything, look more intensely yellow-gold than the last time they met.
The address given to Chloe doesn't lead her into Nashville proper, but close enough, just outside of the city limits without necessarily being part of any of the city's suburbs. It's not quite the most ostentatious building ever, despite the quality of the business card given to her. In fact, it looks mostly like a reappropriated warehouse. At least the windows aren't broken and the edifice is clean, but it's certainly not what one would expect. The only thing even marking it as a place of business is the brushed metal logo of Brute Force Wrestling on the outside, above a large double door gate leading into the building itself.
And from there, a camera and an intercom, with a large sign saying 'For Business, press here', noting the button underneath the monitor of the intercom.
Chloe stops outside. This really doesn't look like an especially... savoury place, now that she actually sees it. Who works out of a warehouse? At least it doesn't look broken down, just kind of like it's an unusual location to begin with.
Last chance to duck out, she supposes. Chloe actually thinks about it for a moment - but no. It's not like she has many options, and she'd decided to do this a few days ago.
Chloe pushes the button. She waits a moment to give someone on the other end a chance to be listening, and then says, "Hello? It's Chloe."
After Chloe announces herself through the intercom, the monitor..stays off. But the crackle of the intercom fires up after a long 30 second way. "Ms. Snakebite. We've been expecting you," comes a nasal sounding secretary's voice from the other end. "Mr. Cross is waiting in his office, please walk up the stairs to the office entrance, there will be a waiting room," she finishes before the intercom goes dead.
And as she said, there IS a stairway leading up the otherside of the warehouse to the right of the intercom, leading away from the main entrance. It looks like a maintenance entrance in all honesty, but perhaps this is the motif BFW has decided on. Either way, on the way up, Chloe WOULD at least hear the sounds of wrestling mats and apparent training, muffled as they are through plate glass and metal warehouse walls. It's clear SOMEONE or SOMEONES are working out here in some capacity.
Ms. Snakebite? Really? Chloe isn't sure what she thinks about that. "Just Chloe is fine," she says to the intercom, though she doesn't expect a response.
Chloe steps into the place. It looks as... well, werehouse-y as she expected from the 'maintenance staircase'. She has second thoughts (though given it's not for the first time, perhaps they are third thoughts by now). Either way she has them as she walks toward the stairway, slowing only slightly when she hears wrestling noises; at least there's /something/ she understands here.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Chloe enters the waiting room. She doesn't make herself especially comfortable, given she expects Vyle will want to talk to her soon (his secretary, or whatever, pretty much made that part clear). Plus, she doesn't really want to take her coat off yet; some habits die hard.
The waiting room actually looks like a proper office waiting room, despite obviously being converted from a foreman's office at the top of the warehouse gantryways. Furniture, potted plants, painted walls, etc. The only real reminder that this is basically a warehouse is the large pane windows, from which Chloe could see below several rings, most of which filled with men and women in varying states of grapple. In one far corner, there's even a mock entrance stage like one would see on the major wrestling shows on TV, complete with camera stands (currently lacking cameras).
In any case, the secretary idles away on the computer for a moment before a ring comes to her phone. After a brief conversation, the secretary chimed toward Chloe. "Mr. Cross will see you now, Ms. Chloe," the same nasal intonation as from the intercom.
And in the office? Vernon Cross, a.k.a. Vyle, the mohawked man dressed in an uncharacteristically modest and muted gray suit, with navy blue workout sweats hung from a set of hooks nearby. "-don't care if you say it'll take too long, I need that theme done by the next show."
Chloe actually watches the wrestling practice for a few moments for lack of much else to do. It's good to know that yes, some things are perfectly normal in here. Maybe a lot of up-and-coming wrestlers work out of warehouses? It's not like she's had much opportunity to practice in better places previously... maybe she was better off than she knew.
"Thank you," she says to the secretary, before entering the office. She hears Vyle talking before she enters and knocks, once and politely, so he knows she's coming in - and then she walks in, whether he's done or not, because she /was/ invited.... She unbuttons her jacket the rest of the way, though her tail remains out of sight except for a suspicious lump around her back.
Nice suit, she thinks, before glancing at the workout sweats. He works here too, she supposes.
As he hears the knock at the door, Vyle clams up, looking up to the door, before looking back to his phone. "We'll talk about this later," he says curtly, hanging up the phone before looking up to Chloe. "Sorry, we're trying to get things set for the national rollout, and the usual speedbumps are coming up." Standing up, he smiles to Chloe. "Sit down, we have a lot to talk about," he insists, hands upon his desk.
"So, glad you decided to take the invitation...Chloe," he says, the still unfamiliar name not rolling off the tongue very well it seems, brushing his trademark mohawk a little with his hand. "So, did you make a decision about whether you're ready to join?"
Chloe isn't even sure why she took that name. Is it her old name? She's pretty sure it is - it feels familiar enough to be - but she could be wrong, and she wouldn't even know. Still, she doesn't think it's /that/ weird a name - but she's getting used to people mispronouncing it anyway. Or misspelling it. Seriously, who puts a K at the beginning?
Chloe does sit down, though she sits far forward in her seat and tends to lean forward a little bit. "It's not a problem," she says. "You had work to do, I came in at an odd time." She doesn't seem bothered by catching him on the phone.
She stiffens for a moment at the question, but she expected it. "I have," she says. "I don't know if you've been following the Neo League at all. But you're right. I can't... stay hiding the way I have been. I tried, but half the wrestling groups treat me like a joke, like I'm nothing but a gimmick. And I guess I /am/, but..." She shrugs, expressively.
The Neo League. It's definitely something that Vernon Cross's....'higher ups' have needed to track, and Vyle, for his part, has been keeping an eye on several prospectives, including one that Chloe herself had run into in a fight as well in Mika. "A little bit. We're trying to pull in talent from all over, and the Neo League is big enough that it's on the radar."
He smiles a bit, when Chloe talks about not hiding anymore. He had planted the seeds already before, and it's nice to see them bear fruit so far. "Gimmicks are good, but long as you treat that..." He then points at the general area toward her tail. "...as a gimmick, it'll get treated like one. Someone pretending to have a tail comes off as hokey sure. Which is exactly why you have to stop pretending it is one. "Trust me on this one."
He then stands up, looking over to one of the large windows overlooking the rest of the training area again. "But you have to be upfront with me. Are you going to be here to actually wrestle, or are you here just to find a club where you can 'belong'?"
"I figured you watched. Then you know what happened," Chloe says, and leaves it at that.
Little points of heat brighten Chloe's face for a moment. "Yeah, and normal people don't have tails, so what does that make people who do?" Chloe asks, remaining slightly redfaced despite her best efforts. "Maybe some people think it's hokey, but it hasn't gotten me attacked for being a monster yet."
This is the closest she's come to really talking about it. At all. Progress?
Chloe does not stand up. She remains in her seat, stretching her legs out and sinking down almost bonelessly. She straightens up after a few moments of staying down while Vyle speaks. "I like to wrestle," she says, simply. "I like to fight, too. So I'm not going to drop out of the Neo League, and I'll probably try to get myself into other martial arts events. But if you're asking whether I'll keep wrestling, the answer is yes. Did I pick /this/ wrestling group because if what you said? I won't lie: I did. But I'd fight anyway."
Continuing to look out the window, Cross listens...and smiles. It's not a very friendly smile, but it's a smile hidden from Chloe thanks to him facing away. "No one's saying you have to quit those. Fighting is fighting and wrestling is wrestling. THe overlap is there, but they're still different creatures. I've done SNFs before myself after all," he notes.
Putting on his 'mask' again, the smile turns...more amicable, looking straight to Chloe. "Good. Much as I've been encouraging you to be yourself, I'm still running a business, and I need people committed to wrestling for us." Walking up to Chloe, Cross extends his hand out. "Welcome to Brute Force Wrestling."
Chloe is... relieved. Honestly, what would happen if she'd gotten all this way and he'd decided she didn't want her after all? That would have been embarassing, maybe mortifying. She needs a job, but she certainly isn't going to leave the rest of her (quite enjoyable) fighting career. Without it, how is she going to try to figure out who she was?
Or, more urgently, how is she going to try to figure out what she is?
She rises from her own seat in a display of impressive flexibility. She clearly didn't see Vyle's smile at the window, and isn't psychic or anything like that. Chloe hesitates for only a split second before accepting the handshake, gripping firmly. Her hand feels fine, at least. "Good," she says, relieved. "...Thanks."
Log created on 20:57:23 01/23/2015 by Vyle, and last modified on 22:22:19 01/24/2015.