the butcher's bill must always be paid.

[nightmarist]

WHO: Ronan Lynch & YOU
WHERE: The Black Box Fight Club
WHEN: Before Ronan's inevitable capture
WHAT: Business with a certain dealer.
WARNINGS: Who knows?

The Black Box isn't an official name. It's simply the name visitors eventually bestowed upon the worn-down brick garage that belonged to an honest mechanic before it was repurposed and doused in pitch-black paint. Most of the time, the place is abandoned. Fight nights are random, announced just hours in advance and only by word of mouth. Fighters and spectators have to know someone or know someone who knows someone, and even then, the muscle might deny entry to anyone who stinks of narc. It's a private event, buddy.

The entry fee is $90. The winner will walk away with $100,000.

Inside, the fighting ring is just a square delineated by steel traffic barricades. There are no seats, no bleachers for the audience. They'll stand on their own two feet and watch a succession of bareknuckle boxers fight round after bloody round until the champion is declared. Bets can be placed at the bar, which offers two beverage options: cheap beer or cheap whiskey.

This illegal enterprise serves as the cover to an even less legal, even more dangerous business being run out the back.

Ronan Lynch likes to fight a round or two to get his blood pumping, but his associates know he's not there for the prize money. He drops out when his real clients begin to show up and meets them in the place he jokingly refers to as his office: the locker room. This room serves no other purpose these days, as the lockers for some reason refuse to open for anyone other than Ronan Lynch. Each one holds a different treasure, or weapon, or enchanted item. He'll introduce prospective buyers to every single one, if they haven't arrived with something already in mind.

This may seem like a risky strategy, but anyone who might have once considered fucking over Ronan Niall Lynch has since learned better. One time, a would-be thief emerged screaming from the locker room with his hands half-devoured by 24-carat gold scarabs, which only returned to their jewelry form once they'd finished eating the rest of him. Another thief somehow ended up blind and too terrified to describe how he'd come to be that way.

Ronan Lynch doesn't have many friends. But as long as he doesn't deem them a threat to himself, personally, he'll sell anything to anyone. No questions asked on either side of the table.

Comments

[kidsmenu]

[Clinkedink! It sounds kind of like another bell, when the fighters crash into the metal fencing. A shimmery sound, nearly musical, unlike the sonorous clang, clang, of the real bell, the one that decides when the fights stop and start.

It smells like blood in here. Most of it inside the bodies of living people, a bit of it already out now, on the floor.

Maybe if Claudia were in her vampire form, that would be a problem. But as it is, she was thoroughly sated last she had her fangs -- and right now, as of this moment, she is in human shape. She looks twenty something-year-old, with a rich head of blonde hair, dressed in a tasteful peplum dress and a wool coat over it. She laughs brightly as the nearest fighter smashes into the fence in front of her, taking a step back, pretending to be frightened. She studies the tattoo on his back.]

You're bleeding, mon frere, [she calls out to him, poking a tissue through the diamond-shaped space.] But it's just your eyebrow. It looks worse than it is, as I'm sure you know.

[nightmarist]

[ It isn't even what Ronan would consider an injury, but Ronan snags the tissue to mop up the blood where it's seeping into his eye and half-blinding him. He doesn't thank the woman, busy as he is, diving back into the fight.

After he's won it and decided he's had his fill, however, he walks past her on his way toward the locker room and offers the slightest nod of recognition - which is about as much thanks as anyone can expect from Ronan Lynch. ]

[kidsmenu]

[What a blatantly damaged creature. And she isn't thinking about his wounded brow, either, or necessarily the rumors that permeate this place -- though she is too sharp to have missed those.

She nods back at him, a porcelain-perfect smile on her face as she watches him go.


It's ten, perhaps fifteen minutes later, before there's a patter of a tiny fist on the door. The cape that had swung at her bottom in her adult form now floats well down past her knees, and her blonde hair is caught up in ringlets to offset her huge and frightened eyes.]

[nightmarist]

[ Ronan greets the arrival with about as much warmth as he'd spared for her earlier, though he doesn't realize he's looking at the same person. He stares for a moment at this life-size doll of a girl, wondering who the hell brings a kid like this into a fight club, then decides he doesn't want the details. ]

If you're looking for your mom or your sister or whoever, pretty sure she's out by the cage.

[kidsmenu]

She isn't. I already looked.

[Technically, Claudia is lying. But that started a long time ago.]

Will you help me find her, monsieur?

[It's not even a deliberate ruse, the French. But a convenient convenience, that she used it both in her adult form and as a child. She puts out a tiny hand, expectant; manages not to be. Overtly demanding.]

I hope she hasn't been taken. There are all sorts of rumors about this place.

[nightmarist]

[ Unfortunate for her, that this Ronan Lynch has never been a father or a nurturer. He didn't have friends to usher him tenderly from orphanhood to adulthood. Humanity betrayed him and he owes none of them his kindness - not even the small ones. ]

People don't get taken from here.

[ And he doesn't appreciate the insinuation that they do. ]

Look again or wait outside. You don't need me for it.

uggghgh i forgot i was movie canon but whatever I'M DOING IT

[kidsmenu]

[Neither of them currently appreciate the irony that Ronan's future holds for himself. 'People don't get taken from here.'

Hm. Claudia studies him through her tiny doll face. Metas certainly are a brutish lot since the war began. Obviously, that would be remedied if the government were to take control and put an end to this sort of lawless, isolative bullshit. Oh well. Until that happens, she decides to cast caution to the wind -- if caution is the word for this, at all.

She proceeds to: burst into tears.]

J'ai si peur, [she cries out, hands on her eyes. except that, of course, once her palms come away there are starfish prints of blood on her face, patched over each eye. and more of it brimming in her tear ducts.]

well, it IS a "private event" after all...

[photophobic]

The degenerate carnival of violence Ronan Lynch uses as a smokescreen for the dangerous business of dealing in magical artifacts is rarely a quiet affair— and why would it be? This is a place for indulging in those darker animal instincts deemed undesirable in an ordered society of rules and propriety. Blood, sweat, beer and gasoline. Jeers and taunts, the crash and cry of a bested opponent slammed and slumped over the makeshift barricade of the boxing ring— a man running screaming from the back room might not even raise an eyebrow, on rowdier nights such as this one.

But silence?

It falls on them without warning. Some of the patrons freeze with their faces caught in a moment of surprise; others waver in a strangely blank, hollow terror, unblinking eyes fixed in an unfocused stare. They teeter collectively on the edge of disbelief and emptiness for a heartbeat, two, more, then turn and begin to sleepwalk towards the exit, where the mindless stream parts to flow past a solitary figure standing unmoved as an island at the threshold.

[nightmarist]

To Ronan, that abrupt silence is an alarm warning of the highest danger. A raid would have been accompanied by shouted orders to run. A robbery would be met with gunfire. But silence? The only conceivable way the Black Box goes silent in the middle of a fight night is the sudden death of everyone inside.

Ronan is in the locker room when everything goes quiet. The lull instantly draws his gaze up from the stack of cash he'd been counting. Cautiously, he sets it aside and reaches for his AR-15. It's not the best weapon he owns, but it's the one least likely to betray him as an imPort.

(Magic is always a last resort. That's one of the rules that have kept him a free man.)

He has the assault rifle aimed and ready as he marches into the main room. It's a sexy gun, the kind that makes people in movies look really badass, which is why he chose it. The only time he's ever actually used the thing was to shoot at beer bottles in a parking lot. Pointing it at someone is usually enough.

People are still streaming past the mysterious dark figure when Ronan steps out with all his mob boss bravado, and it's the weird state of them that makes him lower the gun a couple of inches to reconsider.

...Hypnosis?

[photophobic]

The figure in the doorway is masked in black and chrome under the cowl hood of his robes, but somehow just the briefest, slightest tilt of his head as he focuses on Ronan suggests a pleased kind of curiosity despite the lack of facial features. Certainly, he isn't worried by the appearance of a gun.

He doesn't seem particularly interested in harming any of tonight's attendees either, allowing them to slip past him and out almost as if he doesn't see them at all, having assigned them to irrelevancy.

"Cameras?" the deep voice distorted through the helmet asks in a surprisingly light, almost cordial tone.

[nightmarist]

"Of course not."

Ronan doesn't want his face on camera any more than this stranger does. He lowers the gun, having recognized the probable uselessness of it, but doesn't drop it. If it is his day to die, he's not dying quietly.

"I'd offer you a drink, but..." He gestures vaguely at his face, indicating the mask. "I don't even see a straw hole in that thing. Is there a tube somewhere?"

[photophobic]

Is Ronan's visitor annoyed by Ronan's levity? Amused? It's impossible to tell. But in any case, with the last of Ronan's other guests having left, the oversized hulk of him strides forwards, fluid but unhurried. Behind him, the door slams shut, rattling on its hinges with the force of the impact. He stops at the edge of the ring, pausing to either admire or examine his surroundings... then, Ronan himself.

"I'm told you might have something I'm looking for," he says, as disinterested in pleasantries as he's certain his host is in supplying them— and before he can be interrupted, he lifts a gloved hand to demand the space for an assurance of understanding: "For a price I intend to pay."

[nightmarist]

Ronan doesn't flinch at the door slam. His fingers only twitch in the direction of the trigger, despite his rifle's nose remaining pointed at the floor.

Hypnosis. Telekinesis. A psychic type, obviously, but is telepathy one of his skills, too?

Better to err on the side of caution. Ronan grounds himself, focusing on the weight of the gun and the pain in his jaw from that fight earlier and how his left foot kind of itches and he is nothing special. He is nothing special. He is nothing special.

"Great," he drawls. "I love getting paid. What's the thing?"

[photophobic]

"Sunlight."

It's a simple answer, an almost laughably innocent request in comparison to some of the items he's heard Ronan has supplied to previous clients in the past— not that all such stories are to be believed, of course. But supplied to the right person, even this much proof of his intent would put him at considerable risk.

Or it will be, once he's carried out his plan. His head tilts as he scrutinises Ronan's face from behind his visor.

"To begin. Consider it a test."

[nightmarist]

Ronan, a delinquent through and through, is not very fond of tests.

"If you're trying to get some sun, man, you could just take that shit off and go chill outside. I don't think you need my help for that."

[photophobic]

"Contained sunlight," he says sharply, a certain tension slipping into his voice alongside the digital interference. "Extremely compact. Easily transportable. Can it be done."

precisely the same time, the next week;

[photophobic]

The Black Box is quiet on Kylo Ren's return, which is largely what he expected. He had even considered it possible Ronan Lynch might use the days following his visit to pack up the operation and run— but a slow, creeping push of his senses towards the building returns the tell-tale signature of life. Someone, at least, is inside.

He doesn't knock. Why would he knock? A curl of his fingers has the latch yielding, the door swinging open. He steps inside.

Silent and deserted, illuminated only by what little light spills from the locker room at the back, the makeshift fightclub takes on an eerie aspect that Kylo finds oddly thrilling... and he realises he's been waiting for this moment all week. Something in the back of his mind has been quietly turning over the idea of Ronan Lynch since the moment he set eyes on him, since he felt the deliberate insistence thrumming through his mind.

What kind of dealer of rare and precious items would be that determined to be nothing of consequence?

He runs a thoughtful, gloved fingertip along the steel barricade of the emptied ring as he paces around it towards the back. If Ronan doesn't emerge with the sound of his footfalls, the following slam of the heavy outer door should summon his attention.

[nightmarist]

If Ronan were the type to pack up and run at the first sign of trouble, he would be Declan, not Ronan.

Which isn't to say he's at ease. All sorts of criminals have walked through that door, many of them rebel terrorists, and none have shaken Ronan quite as badly as the man in the helmet. But he would have no business at all if he let fear drive his decisions. He would be cowering with all the other metahumans, as good as - if not literally - a prisoner.

Either very brave or very stupid, he's alone here today. His priority is finishing the job as smoothly as possible. When dealing with a psychic type, that means doing it by himself. Fewer minds, fewer paranoid thoughts and slips of information. Sure, maybe that means he's about to be robbed. But if it gets the man in the helmet out of his damn club sooner, he'll take the loss.

He's not holding a gun, this time, when he appears in the doorway of the locker room to greet his dark and mysterious visitor. "You're punctual," he remarks, like he hasn't been sitting here in a cold sweat all day, waiting for the sound of those boots approaching.

[photophobic]

"One of my remaining virtues," Kylo replies smoothly. Through the processing of the helmet, it's difficult to say if the rejoinder was intended to be humourous— and the expressionless face of his mask provides nothing in the way of evidence either way.
But if what Ronan wants is for his masked visitor to keep his distance, he gets his wish. Kylo intrudes no further, apparently content to observe him from the half-shadow for now.

He's here for the merchandise, yes. But also the play.

[nightmarist]

Ronan is only 45% sure that there’s a living creature under that thing, but he’s pretty sure it just tried to joke with him. It is not charming. It’s unsettling.

“Where’d you lose the rest?” he counters anyway.

If the customer isn’t coming to him, it looks like he’s going to the customer. Ronan leaves the safety of the doorway to approach Kylo with a casual stride, though anything with a nose can probably smell the fear on him.

[photophobic]

There probably aren't many people who could answer that question. Kylo could, if he were willing. He remembers with absolute clarity the concrete cage where he left such things behind.

But he says nothing, simply tracking Ronan's motion with his expressionless stare until he comes to a stop a handover's distance away, radiating a peculiar blend of fear and the foolhardy determination, almost a compulsion, to confront it. The pause is long enough to suggest Ronan won't be getting his answer.

"The merchandise," Kylo says. The change of subject is abrupt, though the curious tilt of his head suggests an interest in what he sees in front of him rather than anything yet to be revealed. "You have it for me."

[nightmarist]

Ronan feels the weight of that interest bearing down on him, as if it's something tangible enough to suffocate him, but it's not the first time the anxiety of discovery has taken that form. It's probably nothing. And there's still a transaction to get through.

"I did promise I wouldn't waste your time."

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieves a folded envelope. The glow of its contents illuminates the paper, already proof enough, but he withdraws a single pill and offers it up for inspection. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the capsule shines bright enough to hurt if stared at directly. Ronan keeps his eyes on the mask, instead.

"No heat," he assures Kylo. "Just light. Easy to move, easy to hide. If it's too bright, maybe dip it in chocolate or something. I have ten, like you asked."

[photophobic]

Unseen behind the mask, Kylo smiles.
Slow. Satisfied. He holds out his hand, the oppressive weight of his attention shifting from the dealer to the item.

Even from what he's seen, he's confident these capsules will provide something. How much and for how long, it's hard to say. Maybe impossible, until he has the opportunity to provide Apollo with one to test the results.

"And a single dose is sufficient?"

These are apparently supposed to be for vampire hunting, after all.

[nightmarist]

Ronan tucks the capsule back into the envelope and hands it over. This requires stepping closer to Kylo, which is something he obviously doesn't relish, as he retreats swiftly after the exchange. To his credit, he does it like he's in a hurry and not because he's afraid Kylo will suddenly snatch him along with the product.

"It's like they're swallowing the sun. Anyone with a life-threatening sun allergy probably won't feel great. That's as much as I know about it."

[photophobic]

Ronan's tumbling collection of carefully concealed fears graze past Kylo's senses as he hurriedly deposits the envelope in Kylo's outstretched hand— but he lets them go, for now, occupied with his examination of the contents. Ten blindingly bright capsules. Ten units of life. Ten gifts of strength, ten acts of revenge. Apollo is owed far more.

They both are.

Swiftly, he shifts the packet, disappearing it into his robes to exchange it for an envelope of his own. Plain and unmarked, it appears utterly unremarkable, though the shape of it suggests Kylo hadn't been toying with Ronan when he suggested a communications disruptor as payment. The device inside is a little smaller than a standard deck of cards and perhaps a little heavier, currently offline. Kylo holds it out.

"I could provide you with more," he offers. "In exchange for future services. If your supplier is willing."