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“And stay down!”
A hard boot slammed into the back of the poor sucker’s head, issuing an audible crunch as he went still against the concrete. Despite the horrible sound, the man on top of him grinned.
“Finally. Awful sturdy for a skinny bastard.” Removing his boot, he got to work slipping the weird jewelry off of his arms and rifling through his pockets in search for money. He’d given off the vibe of being some rich weirdo, so hopefully there’d be a good haul for it.
Not like it mattered all that much, anyway. Most of the police were too worried about Gear attacks rather than looking into random assault cases. Even if they were, by the time they would manage to start scraping things together, he would have been out of town already.
His eyes shone as he looked over the man’s pilfered rings. “Damn, these’ve gotta be ancient.” It was some kind of silver wrought into elaborate patterns, made with just enough imperfections that it had to be handmade. Despite their apparent age, though, they appeared to be in remarkable condition, kept at a pristine shine.
The guy’s wallet wasn’t much to sneeze at, just a couple hundred and not much more to be said. He didn’t care much. Based on the rings alone, he knew he’d be able to make a good haul. Jewelry was one thing, but antiques were something else entirely.
He rolled the body onto its back. Doing so revealed a shiny protrusion that jutted out from his forehead, vanishing behind gray bangs. It had been the reason why he’d caught sight of the man in the bar in the first place. What kind of weirdo wandered around with something like that taped to his head? It was just asking for trouble.
It was hard to tell what it was made of from a glance, though. All he could tell was that it was shiny. He reached out, grabbing onto the metal to try and pull it off.
A cold hand snapped around his wrist, holding on tight. He shouted in panic, yanking in an attempt to free himself. He realized the hand belonged to the man that he’d beaten into the pavement, somehow awake despite having been knocked out at best and spilling his brain matter out onto the sidewalk at worst.
He found himself staring into a pair of mismatched eyes. The bizarre horned man was smiling at him, somehow not screaming in pain.
“Can I have those back, please? They’re mine.”
As he spoke, the other man watched in horror as the crushed-in fragments of skull appeared to press back out, fusing once more into a normal shape like nothing had ever happened. A blood ritual?! Some kind of black magic?! It wasn’t anything like how healing magic was supposed to work.
The grip on his hand didn’t lessen. Panicking, he pulled the knife out of his hip sheathe and shoved it into the other’s chest, throwing himself in the opposite direction as hard as he possibly could to break out of his grip.
And absolutely nothing happened.
Well, he might have sprained his wrist from yanking so hard. But aside from that, he was still being gripped, and his knife slipped back out from between the man’s ribs with a wet squelch to drop into his lap. It was definitely bloodstained, but there was no sign of a wound.
“Can you please not do that?” The stranger sounded only moderately annoyed, like he’d accidentally bumped into him instead of beating him up, trying to mug his dead body, and then stabbing him. “It felt nice, but I actually like this shirt. I’d rather not have to stitch it up and wash the bloodstains out. Again.”
However, halfway through ‘it,’ the mugger had managed to finally pull himself loose, and he promptly ran off, screaming in terror and dropping everything he was carrying.
“...Well, I suppose that works, too.” Raven stood up and dusted himself off, thumping the back of his head to let the last few bone shards settle back into place. He picked up his rings and slid them back into place, and turned back towards the bar. Maybe he could use another drink or two. Hopefully nobody else would try and stab him, that was already the third time and it wasn’t even midnight yet!