The Stranger glared at his smoking and hissing wrist, before looking over his shoulder and following the chain back to its source.

He was expecting a warrior that had broken free of his mind control through sheer mental will power, or somehow through the power of friendship, or even that the target had risen from her death slumber to stop him upon realising her pet was being beaten.

What he got instead, caused him to frown deeply and scrunch his face in disgust as if the result was a personal insult to him.

A scrawny, scruffy and homeless looking child held the other end of the chain. They looked like a strong breeze might knock them over and send them tumbling down the street, yet they stood firm as their stick thing arms trembled as they held back the strangers supernaturally strong arm.

"I don’t know what you are, who you are or what you are doing here. But I can’t just sit around and let you take my best investor." Midas said with a shaking laugh and a half hearted smile, in an attempt to mask his utter lack of confidence.

He had seen the way his body reacted to the chain, grabbed one of the loose bundles from where the cart tipped and threw it. And that was pretty much as far as he had planned.

A single tug of the Strangers arm yanked Midas off of his feet, sending him flying through the air and into the strangers waiting grasp, as he dropped the chain in the process. He let out a choked whimper as the Strangers hand clamped around his throat, and he was held off of the ground like a rag doll.

"Curious, I seem to have missed you... I don’t know how, the smell alone is bad enough. Then again, missing a worm within the dirt is hardly an issue.

To think though, you could have run away and saved your own miserable life... yet you stand and fight to save a woman who sees you as nothing more than cattle to be slaughtered. It would almost be noble if it wasn’t pathetic." The Stranger said with a condescending chuckle, as Midas got a clear look at the face hidden beneath the hood.

The claw marks that ruined his once handsome face, the permanent sneer and unblinking eye that those scars had given him, and the fact that his eyes glowed bright red, much like Belladonna’s.

He could also see clearly over this man’s shoulder, that the giant cat creature was shifting its tail slowly and letting it disappear into the shadows behind it.

Having just logged in to find all this chaos, Midas had absolutely no idea what was going on. He had seen Belladonna being taken and guards slaughtering their own, and this man beating a monster, and simply acted on whatever idiotic ideas that he could muster.

But he was a smart man. Smart enough to know from the weak look in that large creatures swollen eyes, that it was on his side, and that all he could do right now was stall for time. So, he did the only thing he knew how to do.

"You know, I have a wonderful cream for those scars. It would heal them right up, barely leave a mark and would give you your looks back. What do you say?

It could be yours for a very affordable price, in fact, since you’re a first time buyer why don’t I knock five percent off of the price, just to be nice. " Midas said with a strained voice, as he flashed his usual award winning business man smile.

The Stranger frowned, taken off guard by the comment. Usually this was when they would beg for their lives. Beg, plead and whimper not to be slaughtered like the cattle they were, telling him of how many children they had as if that was supposed to make him feel sympathetic and not hungrier.

He liked the part when they begged, it was one of his favourite parts. He had never in all his years, had someone try to sell something to him. Bargain for their lives with wealth, yes, but never just try to sell him something.

"A cream..." The Stranger muttered, frowning deeply as he genuinely thought about it for a second, despite his wrist still hissing from the chain wrapped around it.

"That’s right! Just one application every four hours for a week, and you’ll be right as rain!" Midas said with a wheezing laugh, as a spiked tail slowly emerged from the darkness below him. One of the spikes poked through a loop on the chain, lifting it gently so that it didn’t make a noise, before the spike launched from the tail.

It tore through the Strangers guts, bursting through the other side and just barely scraping passed Midas’ own stomach. A gaping hole was left in the middle of the Strangers stomach, with a sizzling chain draped through the hole.

Midas immediately grabbed the chain and yanked it through even more, before wrapping it around the Strangers neck and pulling it tight. Behind him, the beaten shadow monster weakly reached forwards and slammed down a paw on the chain, yanking the Strangers throat back.

The Stranger choked as the chain pressed against his throat, immediately burning where it touched, and dropped Midas as his hands shot towards the makeshift noose.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, Midas coughed heavily, before scooping up a portion of the chain and lunging forwards. He wrapped it around the Stranger wherever he could, whilst the shadow monster shot more holes through him, and with each hole came a chain feeding through like the eye of a needle. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The gaping holes quickly closed and healed, only to be stopped when they reached the chains where they began to hiss and burn.

Loop by loop, hole by hole, they wrapped the stranger up in his own chain, using his own body to stop him from being able to untie himself, as his arms were pressed tight against his chest and legs bound together.

It was a predicament that was only made worse when he tried to snap his fingers, which resulted in the chains drawing themselves taut and dragging him back to the cart, where he writhed and squirmed in their tightening grasp, constantly snapping his fingers in an attempt to undo the bindings, until another spike tore through his hand, pinning him to the shuddering metal crate bound in the same chains as he was.