Chapter Text
Vox's rat employee enters his office, posture stiff and expression a poor attempt of nonchalance. Trying to act innocent despite knowing what she did.
She stops in front of Vox’s desk and clasps her hands behind her back. “Mister Vox, you summoned me?”
“I did. But first,” Vox gestures to the chair beside her, “take a seat.” She does so gingerly. “I summoned you up here because I wanted to show you this.”
He pulls up a hologram of a viral Voxtagram reel. It appears to be recorded from a camera overlooking Velvette’s fashion department. The reel starts with Velvette using her magic to measure four of her models at the same time. She stops when she gets to their waists, as she finds one of them too big. With her vicious words alone, Velvette causes the model to have a panic attack. She only continues to yell and berate the model before kicking her out of the room. Vox closes the projection after the clip ends.
“This video was posted by an anonymous Voxtagram account last night and quickly gained over a million views. You can imagine how the viewers reacted, what with people's sensitivity to highly emotional episodes. Most notably, however, was the camera that recorded this moment: my own.” Vox's eye twitches when he recalls the sheer rage of finding his security footage hacked into. “My business associate and I personally tracked down the Sinner behind the anonymous account. Guess who it traced back to.” Vox watches Velvette materialize behind the Sinner as she disenchants her invisibility spell.
Oblivious and stone-faced, the rat begins to answer Vox's question. “Was it —?”
“You,” Velvette finishes. Holographic ropes sprout out of thin air and tightly wrap around the arms and legs of both the rat and chair, trapping her.
The rat's eyes widen before she quickly composes herself. She glares at Velvette as she rounds Vox's desk and joins his side. “Yes, it was me,” The rat confirms, “and I'm not afraid to admit it. That was my girlfriend you were insulting.”
“Unsurprising,” Velvette replies, unfazed. “A rat and a pig are perfect for each other, after all.”
“Don't you dare call my girlfriend a pig!”
“You speak of daring,” Vox pipes up, “while being audacious enough to not only deliberately violate one of the VoxTek Employee Rules of Conduct, but to also mess with my cameras.”
“For once, I have to thank you for your voyeur cameras!” exclaims the rat. “It gave me video evidence of the abuse my girlfriend has been suffering for so long! Tell me, Miss Velvette, how you’ve been holding up under all the backlash?”
“Please,” Velvette rolls her eyes, “you’re acting like nobody’s ever tried cancelling me before. We’re in Hell, darling, bitches are getting slapped left and right all the time. Give it a week tops and nobody will remember your fat boo.”
“Call her fat one more time and I swear —” snarls the rat.
“Well, would you look at the time!” Velvette cuts in. She turns to Vox, a knowing glint in her eyes that he mirrors back. “As you know, V, I’ve something prepped for right now, so I’ve got to run! Don’t miss me too much!”
“I have full faith in you, my dear,” Vox replies. Velvette winks before leaving his office.
“Of course she scarpers,” scoffs the rat.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Vox tells her calmly. “She is dealing with something vital after all.”
“Yeah? It’s so urgent that she has to stop interrogating me to deal with it?”
“Are you implying that a woman of high status and fearsome power is a coward?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” The rat bursts out and Vox has half a mind to electrocute her until she bites off her tongue. “Sure, sinners are desensitized to verbal abuse, but so many more of your employees are coming out with their own horror stories of working under you three. And considering what you Vees are like, they’re just going to keep flooding in! Try forgetting all of them!”
Vox internally hears the notification of Velvette’s go-ahead text and he grins. “The buzzing of insects. An annoyance at worst but easily squashed. You speak so lowly of us but just earlier you were thanking me?”
“That was sarcasm, you fucking egomaniac. Nobody likes your voyeur cameras.”
“Would you hack into them again?”
“What do you think?”
“I think so. However, do so at your own risk. Otherwise, you may see things you don’t want to see, such as —”
Vox projects another hologram. This one displays Velvette wearing surgical attire in an operating room. The rat’s girlfriend lies unconscious on the operating table.
The rat’s hostile expression immediately morphs into one of pure horror. “Hey, wait, wait — is that my girlfriend?” Vox ignores her to pull up his phone and replies to Velvette’s text (“Begin now.”) “What — what are you two sick fucks doing to her?”
Vox doesn’t bother to look up from his phone. “You don’t like her being fat, do you?”
“She’s not fat, she’s a perfectly healthy weight!”
“Still too big for Velvette,” Vox counters simply. “But no need to worry about your sweetheart facing her ire anymore. She’s removing the issue. See those surgical tools? The blades are all made from angelic metal.”
“No,” Vox looks up so he can see the terror on the rat’s face as Velvette begins marking the incision, “no, no, don’t! Stop — STOP IT!”
“You did this to her,” Vox reminds her, pocketing his phone. “If you had stayed in your place, none of this would have happened.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong!” cries the rat. “Hurt me! Not her!”
“Hey.” Vox gets the rat’s attention by shooting an electrical current at her. She flinches at the shock before glancing at Vox in delicious fear. “If you try to leak this or anything that happens in this building again, we won’t stop at remodeling your girlfriend’s ribs.” Vox stands up and dims the lights of his office to show the hologram to better clarity. “Now keep watching.”
With that, he walks out of his office, tuning out the desperate pleas of the rat so he can focus on texting Val what happened.