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

[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.]