maskormenace contact post

[aberrant_type]

[first: ten seconds of sonorous humming as Hange waits for some indication that this strange device is active. then:] -- oh, it's working?

This is Hange. I suppose you tell me why you're contacting me now.

Comments

Ronan Lynch makes a PHONE CALL on purpose

[nightmarist]

Something's happening to me. If I let you look at me, can you figure out how to stop it?

1/2

[aberrant_type]

[picks up, says hello, listens to message...]

Huh?

2/3

[aberrant_type]

Ah... you must be truly desperate to come to me for help!

now i'm done for real

[aberrant_type]

But of course, I'll take a look! [upbeat, as usual.

though in a tone of mild reproach:]

This is why it's valuable to have baseline information, you know.

[nightmarist]

[He ignores that entirely.]

Do I come to you or do you come to me?

[aberrant_type]

Well, what would you be more comfortable with? Probably at your place, don't you think?

[nightmarist]

Yes. That would be... easier.

[The last time he tried to drive in this state, he passed out at the wheel.]

[aberrant_type]

That's fine with me. When would you prefer to do this? Are you free now? I'm free now.

[nightmarist]

Right now. Yes. Try not to let anyone else see you. I don't want them to know. I'm in the chapel. Come straight here.

[aberrant_type]

[This is extremely suspicious... but of Ronan's cohort, the only ones she has any knowledge of are Adam and Matthew. The former she thinks is a slaver, the latter is... obviously unsuited, so this will be private for now.]

Right. Give me a little to get things together, I'll be right there.

[no time to change his mind. 8) and she'll be there... well, it takes a little under two hours honestly, what with getting supplies together, making the trip through the transporter, then getting to the Meadows. She knows the grounds well enough by now to not get turned around coming to the chapel. This time, even the horses won't distract her.]

[nightmarist]

[Ronan has hardly moved in these two hours, laid across a pew and doing his best to be invisible in the darkness. He only sits up when he hears someone enter, peeking at first to be sure it's Hange, then pulling himself to his feet.

There is something wrong with his face. The thing that is wrong with his face is that most of it isn't there. At least, that's how it looks, because what's coming out of him catches no light at all. A liquid void had rained down his cheeks like so many tears, and it's leaked from his nostrils and his mouth and his ears, and it's hard to tell if this thing is still spilling from him or it's stopped now.]

[aberrant_type]

[At first she thinks she's not seeing it right. It's a trick of the light, a trick of the brain. She comes forward without saying anything, watching him, and in those moments realizes that it's not a mind trick, but her properly discerning - something. Something strange and impossible. She comes right up to him then, and reaches for his collar to tug and urge him downwards so she can really study this. There's no panic, though she's surprised, just intent study.]

[nightmarist]

[Obediently, he bows down so she can look more closely at it, though it probably makes no more sense up close than it did from far away. There is an inherent wrongness to it. It is so intensely nothing that it becomes a threat, as if anything that touches it might also cease to be.

Miraculously, Ronan still has eyes. His irises look very, very pale when surrounded by all this blackness.]

It's going very slow.

[The fact that he can speak without choking is evidence of that.]

[aberrant_type]

What... the hell...?

[oh, she knew it, she knew there were going to be mysteries about him that stretched and defied her comprehension. Hange dips a finger towards the black juice. She's okay if some of it gets on her.]

When did this start?

[nightmarist]

[It's like oil on her finger, if oil was also vantablack. Despite the spookiness of it, it does not eat away her skin.]

It was coming out of my ear when I woke up this morning. Then it stopped. Then it was like a nosebleed for a while, and that stopped, too. It happened again a little while before I called you. I called because it wasn't stopping.

Can I ask you a favor, in case I fall asleep soon?

[aberrant_type]

[She rubs her fingers together, testing the slickness of it, at the same time as she starts pushing him gently backwards. She'd like if he at least sat on a pew.]

Well, you can ask. Fire away.

[nightmarist]

[That's a good idea. He sits down.]

Don't let them find me. Let them think I went home. There's a wheelbarrow in the garden outside. You can haul away whatever's left of me in that. I don't care.

[aberrant_type]

[Ah, there's a moment where she's relieved he's not asking her to finish him off. Ronan might deny his humanity himself, and he's gone on about being a dream construct to her, but Hange has taken it all with a giant grain of salt and he looks and acts so human in all the ways that matter.]

Mm... I can do that, I suppose.

[Matthew will fall asleep again, and she has no problem letting the deception stand for the others.

With Ronan sitting, Hange stands taller than him. She pauses for a moment to look him over, before she sets the case she's carrying down on the same pew and abruptly kneels to pop it open.]

Roll up your sleeve, take off your shirt, do whatever you need to do to let me at that vein.

[nightmarist]

[He would never ask someone else to kill him. He's perfectly capable of doing that himself.

Ronan shrugs off his jacket, and the shirt underneath is sleeveless, so he merely offers her his arm.

...Maybe he isn't perfectly capable of killing himself. There are a lot of failed attempts scarred all over that arm.]

[aberrant_type]

[She registers the sight but doesn't comment, pulling iodine swabs from her supplies, opening them up, and wiping them over the soft skin inside his elbow. The swab leaves and orange stain and she wads it up, already pulling a hypo and vial from her stuff.

Normally she'd be excited to FINALLY get her hands on a blood sample, but now she's kind of concerned it will just be ooze.]

Do you have any idea what's going on? What might have triggered this?

[nightmarist]

You're going to hate this answer.

[Normally he would be terrified to give her a blood sample, but now he's pretty sure it'll just be ooze.]

It was a demon. Last time.

[aberrant_type]

[She twists the needle in deftly. His veins are prominent, really it doesn't feel like much... and she watches the phial avidly. Will it be ooze?]

You're right, I do hate that answer.

[She sounds half-distracted though.]

Tangled with any demons recently?

[nightmarist]

[Ronan also watches it as it fills. Black, black, black. Maybe all of him is already a void on the inside. It feels like a joke.]

That's the weird part. The demon's long gone. There's no ley line here that another one could be using to sneak its way into me. None of this makes any fucking sense.

[aberrant_type]

[Tck tck tck tck tck, Hange clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth repeatedly. Ronan!! This is SO above her pay grade, but she still seems pretty calm and collected as she pops one vial out of place and then immediately pops another one in. She'll take a few samples...]

Long gone, you say. Were they present in this world? [because the way he puts it sounds ambiguous to her]

[nightmarist]

[Ronan wonders what nothing looks like when it's put under a microscope, and for some reason he's unsettled by the thought.]

Not here. This all happened back home, last year. In the time between when I was here before and when I came back a couple weeks ago.