Chapter Text
All you need is a phone. Yours had died on your way home, but this part of the city is new to you. You couldn’t even find a taxi to wave down.
It’s far too late, and you’re tired and less-than-sober, so you step into the only open business you could find. The smell of cigarettes and cheap booze overwhelms you, despite bracing for it.
The inside of the building is dimly lit, but crowded. Every table has at least someone at it. You feel all of them stare as you walk up to the bar. It’s suddenly far more quiet than it had seemed from outside.
“I need to use your phone.”
The bartender looks you up and down with an expression you don’t appreciate.
“What, someone swipe yours?”
That’s… a concerning first thought for him to have.
“No, it’s just dead. I-”
Before you can finish your sentence, the bartender smirks and you feel someone grab your arms from behind.
“Lucky for us!” the bartender laughs.
You struggle against the person holding you back, but can’t escape. Someone at the bar happily starts snagging any valuables they can from you, laying them all on the counter.
“Not a whole lot on ya. Bummer, huh?” The thief smiles at you, but you see something dark in his eyes. “You’re not too bad lookin’ though, maybe we can figure something else out-”
Panic flares up in your chest in an instant. You try even harder to pull away, much to the amusement of the crowd around you.
You freeze completely when you feel a massive hand land solidly on your shoulder. Glancing back, you see a monster looming over the crowd: a giant skeleton with a half-gold jaw and an obvious crack leading away from it, up the side of his skull. His pupils are a deep, smoldering red.
The burning fear in your chest goes ice cold.
The monster, hand still on your shoulder, smiles. His metal jaw creaks and you swear this is what Death himself must look like.
A second enormous hand pushes away the man holding you back, holding both your arms behind you at once without any effort. Having you firmly contained, the hand on your shoulder reaches to retrieve your belongings from the counter.
“Hey, waddaya think-” the thief stops short, paling as the skeleton’s eyes land on him. He says nothing else.
The beast that has you captive takes all of your things off the counter in one grab and shoves them into his pocket. Then he slowly pulls you away from the counter, pushing you away and through the crowd, toward the back of the bar.
No, no.
You start struggling again, overwhelmed with fear of what this skeleton might do to you. His hand doesn’t budge, but he loosens his grip slightly. You hear a deep, raspy voice, so faint that you never could have heard it in the crowd.
“‘m not-” the creature’s voice catches, like just speaking is difficult, “won’t… hurt ya.”
You… don’t see how you can believe that.
He shoulders his way through a door labelled “BATHROOM”, dragging you along, and locks the door before releasing you.
It smells vile and you immediately search for an exit. In the tiny room, all you can make out is a toilet, a sink, so, so many stains, and the monster in front of you- holding up a phone?
The phone is proportional to him (meaning giant, as far as phones go) and the big chunky letters are easy to read, even in your current state:
im gonna get ya outta here, but you gotta hang onto me.
You take a second to process what you’re reading, before looking up at the beast in front of you. He’s sweating bullets. In fact, he looks about as panicked as you feel.
Whatever he sees on your face, he must not like it, as his brow bones scrunch further and begins typing. His claws tap away delicately at the phone before he turns it around to you.
It’s the exact same message, just pasted into google translate. All you can do is stare at him.
“I… could read it the first time,” you manage to say.
The skeleton looks at you, looks at the phone, then carefully reaches out his hand. It’s pointedly not in your space, face up. “Up to you” is the obvious message.
This is fucking terrifying, but going back out there is so much worse so- you carefully take his hand.
He’s visibly slumps in relief as he pulls you slightly closer and slowly wraps an arm around you. You feel the tell-tale rush of magic in the air as the world around you disappears.
When you open your eyes, you find yourself outside on the other side of town. You’re about halfway between the local park and the police station, which is honestly pretty close to where you live. This guy really did save you.
He quickly lets go of you and backs away, holding out all your stolen items. You take them.
…
…
“That was the scariest fucking thing that has ever happened to me.”
The monster doesn’t react beyond curling in on himself more than he already was.
“Not-! Well, yeah you made that seem so much worse, but you also saved me so it’s- thanks. Just, thank you. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if you weren’t there.”
The skeleton relaxes, a nervous smile stretched across his face. He nods once at you before vanishing. Must be nice to have a trick like that in a pinch.
Now that you have your bearings, you start making your way home. Part of you hopes you’ll see your hero of the evening again sometime. Thankfully, he’d be pretty hard to miss if you ever cross paths.