Fight or Flight Club
"You two were going where? A fight club? Where they beat each other up?" Olive asked, aghast. "Well, I guess he missed his flight, so no bloodsports tonight. Ew."
This really shouldn't be shocking given Aphelion's always going on about MMA and UFC and a lot of other three letter acronyms and Blixa's so into underground scenes that you might as well call him subterranean, but even still, watching people fight for real? Not play fights? Real fights? How so totally morbid!
"I make my plans not around the whims of the unreliable but the desires of mine own heart. Sorry, strawberry, I'm still going. It's only a few hours I'll be gone, never fear," Blixa said as he polished off the last of the rum. "Some musicians find their inspiration in beautiful women and some in a bottle but mine comes from other places."
Cool, her brother who has been pregaming -Blixa, who has half a dozen stories involving less-than-legal things regs might not like- is going to a shady and maybe illegal place on his own in a city he's unfamiliar that's absolutely crawling with regs and weird vampire politics that she didn't understand. Olive freely admitted she was naive but even she could see the potential for this to turn out badly.
"Okay, well, I'll just take Aphelion's ticket or whatever and go with you," Olive said as she tried to put on a brave face. "Don't go places alone! You'll get serial-murdered! That's not allowed on my watch! We are using the buddy system here."
Her brother put his glass down an ew, he poured his blood and rum into one of her good teacups, there's no way that wouldn't stain.
"Olive, I may be blind but I am not in need of a babysitter," he said. "I'm not throwing myself into the ring. I am absorbing the atmosphere. I am basking in hidden worlds. I am rubbing my hands over every surface I can find to steal their secrets for my own. Stay at home and do something fun, won't you? No blood for you, no bruises to see. We can watch Suspiria when I return from my little excursion."
"It's not about that. I'm not...Blixa, what if you lose your phone and you don't know how to find the way back? What if you get drunk and you forget how to speak English again? What if someone has bad vibes? What if there's a devil there and you accidentally sell your soul? I'm going with you. You're just going to have to deal with that."
"Please, my label owns that old thing. They'll have to fight Death Records for my soul," he replied. "No. You would abhor every minute of it. You do not need to come with me. I cannot emphasize enough there is fighting and blood and things you do not care to see."
Anyway, long story short, Olive insisted on going with him despite all of Blixa's repeated protests that she would hate it and should go home, and guess what: she hated every second of being here.
She tried to dress for the occasion in her toughest outfit -which mostly meant that she wore her one pair of black boots and a leather jacket so you couldn't see the hearts embroidered on the front of her dress- but it was clear to anyone who gave her a single glance that this fish was so far out of water she might as well be in a desert. Wow, those guys really were beating the tar out of each other, weren't they? She figured it was super illegal to fight to the death and it was probably like WWE or something, but even still, oh, oh no, wow, that looked painful, ouch. She felt like everyone was staring at her, even if they probably weren’t. More than that, she felt the emotion in the room like a wild rock concert: loud and overpowering and just so, so much. Everyone was excited or angry or hurting or wanting and everyone was as loud as the next.
She needed air. Actually, what she really needed was to go home but she didn't quite want to admit that her brother was right, he neither wanted nor needed her there, and nothing terrible would happen if he watched the fights by himself. Olive did not think she was a prideful person but it was still embarrassing to admit that you were wrong. She slipped away when he was too busy soaking in the ambiance to pay attention. Should she go back to the bar area? But what if someone scary talked to her? Maybe she could just hide out in the bathrooms instead? What if they were gross? She was awash with indecision.
Olive did not like Fight Club or actual fight clubs, it turns out.
