Nightly Drive (for FreestylePoet)

[RedShinigami]

Karl chuckled a little and shivered theatrically as Lousie groaned.
"Mann, oh Mann...is it me or ist freezing here?", he said commenring the rather cold mood in the car.
He did'nt want to force an interview out of her but she was still a debuter and he just has began his work as correspondent, there surely was a way to help them both with this.
"Of course. Frau Morgenstern, right? Hah, is'nt that rich, a dutch girl,managed by a german Manager gets driven home by an austrian reporter. Lets pick up a few more girls and celebrate a Euro-Party right here.", he joked.

When Louise agreed to the interview he pressed the record button on his smartphone and started.
"Interview with Louise Vandenbroeck for Wrestling Impact, done by Karl Schneider.
Miss Vandenbroeck I am glad you followed my invitation...", he gave her a wink.
"To have an interview with me before your grand debut. Before we talk about you Miss Vandenbroeck, first and foremost. How do you feel before your debut? Are you excited to come here an join LAW and do you know who you will fight?, Karl asked while Schurli drove through the nightly rain.

[FreestylePoet]

"Ugh... well, I guess I am excited, in a strange way. You might not believe me from how I talk about it, but I did come here to fight." She had to be careful, as her past life as a basketball player wasn't exactly public knowledge, nor was it something she really wanted to rehash. "It's not exactly where I envisioned my life going, but I'm here now. So yeah, I'll see what I can do, what chances come my way."

Louise thought about the other part of Karl's question. The man didn't seem the type to try and bait her into saying something controversial about an opponent, but she still had to be wary. The less detail she could give while satisfying Karl, the better. "Yes, I believe that's all gotten squared away recently." In truth, it had taken Louise and Christina a while to find a match that met all of the latter's rather strict requirements, but that was the benefit of Christina's managerial deal with LAW. More control. "She's a member of LAW's Young Lioness program, if memory serves me right."

"I dunno, am I supposed to be bouncing off the walls or something? You look like you've been in this business for..." She glanced over at Karl. "A while. Are people gonna wanna make a big deal of my first match?"

[RedShinigami]

Karl sighed.
"Hey, I am 35!", he said and playfully pushed her with his ellbow in the arm.
"Just because I am...a little down on my luck right now does'nt mean I am an old man!"
He listened to her words and nodded.
"Young Lioness...ah this match was what Sheila was babbling about."
He saw her face and cleared his throat.
"Sheila Chihara, she is a good friend of Harmonia Edelstein, I live with Harmonia and the others. Well, I live in the basement and they have their giant mansion. Anyway...", he sighed.
"To answer your question, yes they will. Your first match is'nt maybe something that will decide if you have a vital carreer or not, but it is important for the crowd getting to know you. If you give a good performance they want you back fast, meaning more matches and a faster way up. If you suck, well, then you will fight newbie after newbie until you get your next chance. Your opponent is really excited, so maybe you should too and give us all a stellar performance, winning or not, your debut is important.", the older wrestler said.
"Ok then, Fräulein Vandenbroeck. what brings a girl from a small town in the Netherlands to LAW?",he asked and grabbed for something on the car floor.

[FreestylePoet]

Louise nodded along absentmindedly as Karl explained how she knew Sheila. It wasn't terribly surprising that he lived in a basement, but the rest of his statement was actually... interesting, in a way. She already knew that her debut opponent was nice and unlikely to resort to dirty or perverted tactics. But Karl made a good point; even if she didn't know whether or not she'd enjoy wrestling, Louise would only have one shot to make a good first impression on this league -- and whoever else was watching.

Unfortunately, she was interrupted in her introspection by Karl's next question. And it was a tricky one. Again, her past was her own; she didn't want pity from anyone.

Luckily, her manager's media training had given her some helpful advice on dealing with such questions: Answer quickly yet naturally, avoiding giving any indication that you're thinking about your answer. "I suppose I just found myself in a rut in that 'small town in the Netherlands.' Working odd jobs, just getting by day-by-day. I met Dr. Morgenstern in a bar of all places. One thing led to another, and now I fight women for money." She shrugged at that last part; really, it was fairly ridiculous.

Dr. Morgenstern's training had clearly helped her just now, but Louise still didn't know quite how good she was at lying -- or, in this case, telling half-truths. Nothing she said was outright false, but it was an incomplete story. Only the next words out of Karl's mouth would reveal whether she'd given enough information to satisfy the aged reporter. If not, she might have to get real prickly.

[RedShinigami]

Karl listened carefully as they stopped at a red streetlight.
He did'nt say a word as if he was thinking about how to analyze a very sharp answer. But Louise answer was'nt sharp.

He reached forward and stopped the recording as the lights turned green and he drove on.
"Is that Dr. Morgenstern speaking...", he said and then looked over.
"...or Louise?"
Karls biggest advantage was that people thought of him as kind of simpleton, with his unshaved face, the uncombed hair and his old clothes. But he had a master degree in journalism and knew when someone lied, he did'nt care about it. Louise had her reasons but he wanted to know her story, not for an article, but because he was interested.

"Listen, I can't bring you to say something you don't want but this is'nt all is'nt it?",he asked.
"In fact thats not even half of it..."
He looked down on her knee as if he could feel it.
"We have something in common, havent we Louise?", he asked slowly.
They drove through the sparkling streets of Tokyo, that illuminated the night.

"So,this interview here is conducted by WI Correspondent Schneider asking Team Stanzas debuter some questions. But now it is Karl who wants to know Louise. If that is ok with you.", he said and smirked, winking at her.
"No worries, Karl and the reporter are two different kind of people..."

[FreestylePoet]

Louise's half-lie was easily spotted, and Karl pressed on. She panickedly wondered what tipped him off -- though not regarding her earlier statement. No, something had led the reporter down the road of Louise's most hated secret. Was it her earlier sympathetic look at his own ailing leg and cane? Was it the ginger way she'd helped him to his car? Or did she have some unconscious tic with her left leg that he'd found?

All of a sudden, the rain felt less like a nostalgic filter on the world and more like an oppressive blanket. Its peaceful pitter-patters became a metronome to match her ticking time bomb. As Karl talked, Louise felt his stare boring into her knee like 200 pounds from a squatted barbell. Like the painful promise of a surgeon's needle. Like the fearful first stretches of a rehabilitation routine. Like-

"I think you should keep questions like that out of your damn mouth," she spat out angrily, as if with the instinct of a caged animal.

But then she thought for one second more. Perhaps Karl understood some of Louise's pain. She wasn't ready to explore that possibility yet, really, but something in her begged Louise to let Karl down easy.

"...Besides," she sighed, turning back towards her window. "If, hypothetically, it is exactly as you say. You should know that it's not something that I'd wanna talk about." She was grumbling now, half sheepish at her outburst but still wanting to be as serious as possible. After all, she'd only met Karl, and this was something that she'd only ever talked about with Dr. Morgenstern.

"Ask me something else. Please." Her demand was both terse and desperate, but it also assured Karl that Louise wasn't completely ready to end their conversation. The Austrian was doing her a favor by driving her, so she wasn't going to shut him out completely. But Louise wasn't sorry for how she acted; she would draw her line in the sand, whether he liked it or not.

[RedShinigami]

Karl knew exactly what was going on on Louise.
He had gone through the same and that was the reason he could easily determine that Louise had issues with her knee.
The Austrian was in rehab longer then he could count,seeing different people with different injuries every day, arms, knees, legs,hands,heads...
Louise seemed to have healed good, whatever had happened to her, but when you were hurt so bad like Karl and possibly his drivingcompanion did, then there a few signs do determine were the injury happend.
Quick glances, subtle touching, a twitch here and there.
Karl sighed.
"When it rains it pours, huh?", he said and intended the double innuendo that quote brought with it as he reached for his cellphone.
"Time for some Dr. Morgenstern...", he said, wanting to release the pressure he had put on this kid.
He was'nt that much older and his daughter was five, but since she was born he had grown a soft spot for girls in trouble, especially as he could'nt see his beloved child as often as he wanted.
"Alright Miss Vandenbroeck, so you are going up against Sheila Chihara, a formidable foe, she has'nt much victories to her record but by watching her training with Fräulein Edelstein and watching some of her matches I can say that this will be a tough nut to crack. Do you have a strategy or do you invent on the spot?", he asked.
A valid and harmless question to bring her mind to ease again.
He looked over to her and gave her a wink.

[FreestylePoet]

Louise was taking deep breaths now in an attempt to steady her emotions. Truth be told, she'd gotten close to revealing everything to Karl. Maybe it was that she knew he'd likely experienced something similar to her. Maybe it was that he was a relative stranger, a face in the crowd that she might never see again with how many journos there were surrounding LAW. Maybe the pressure of keeping it in all these years was finally getting to her. Whatever it was, she'd ultimately opted against it, instead going with a verbally violent refusal.

She looked over at Karl as he clicked his recording app back on. Then came his next question -- a relative softball. Louise pressed her lips together before giving him a short, grateful nod. It looked like he wasn't going to press the issue any further for now. Louise felt the pit in her stomach close at that knowledge.

"Well..." She sighed, figuring out how to answer Karl's question. "Far be it from me to reveal all my gameplanning, especially before my debut." This was something that was squarely against what Dr. Morgenstern had advised her. After all, fun teasers to the press hardly hurt a wrestler's chances, so they'd been told to play up pre-match interviews whenever possible. Perhaps Louise's taciturn style might convince Karl that she was indeed her own person, despite her manager's generosity in guiding her through all of this.

"But I'm fast. And explosive on my legs. I hear Sheila is a high flyer as well, so maybe I can learn something."

[RedShinigami]

Maybe she would have told him when he had asked again but what was the use?
He did'nt want to make Louise uncomfortable or sad, indeed Karl wanted her to be happy.
A noble thought by a noble man, Karl really was the "Knight in Shining Armour" Type when it came to girls, as he really missed his little daughter and made up for it by being good to all the girls here at LAW, at least the ones he spoke to.
There was something...honest about Karl that separated him from other reporters who would have bugged Louise or maybe even brainwashed her long enough to tell them everything they wanted.
But not Karl. Being a wrestler, a father and all in all a decent human being just down on his luck he just wanted a small interview with an intresting newcomer.
He did'nt pressure, he joked, and was all in all good company, at least he tried to be.
Maybe this was his austrian blood, famous for being much more relaxed and relatable then their brothers in Germany, more relatable and more talkative.
"Fast and explosive on your legs, I can hardly wait to see you shine, Miss Vandenbroeck. Believe me I will be at ringside, writint an article about your grand debut. So, if you don't mind, something more private. Team Stanza, a colourful group that Frau Dr. Morgenstern has put together. How do you feel about the other girls? Are you all good friends?", he asked.

[FreestylePoet]

Karl's words were... strange, to say the least. Somehow, he seemed both honest and earnest in his desire to watch and report on her debut match. After years of dreaming about being under the limelight -- being respected and praised for her skills -- this was her first taste of something like that. It felt... strange. It felt wrong, though still strangely invigorating. Mostly, though, it felt embarrassing.

Just as Louise felt her face go as red as her signature hair streak, Karl asked his next question. And as promised, it was something more personal. She had to think for a second -- what were the other girls in Team Stanza to her? Teammates and coworkers, surely. People she was willing to work with in pursuit of their shared goals, as she had no good reason not to. A group she could at least get along with, at least for now. But more than that? All the others seemed to be fast friends, and while she was friendly enough with them, Louise tended to keep them at arms' length.

"The others...?" Louise mused. "They're very nice. Everyone gets along extremely well, though I've only known them for a few months at this point. And the first half of that was trying to move into my new place, adjust to Japan, and figure out my onboarding paperwork for LAW." She paused for a moment. Truthfully, she wasn't as close to the others as they were with one another, but she didn't want to make them out to be bad people. "I've had fun so far with them. But I would like to get to know them even better." That, at least, was the truth.