13 Hoodlums hunt (1)

A month went by. As he predicted, the event stirred some trouble. Derrick's father was mad, really mad at what happened.

He tried to bully Sebastian, exactly like his son did for years. However, once Sebastian's mother, Mary, intervened, he put his tail between his legs.

Everyone knew about Mary the deceitful, also called Mary the bloodthirsty. On Somnium's battlefield, tales about Mary were a lot. She was an illusionist, and she used to induce nightmares so scary as to make people literally crazy. In a word, she was scary.

Of course, when Joseph Lawson heard Derrick messed up with her son, he apologized and dismissed the matter. Derrick didn't like that, not even a bit, but obeyed.

However, the school couldn't let the matter go easily, and asked Sebastian to help clean the corridors after school as a form of punishment.

Sebastian obliged for two reasons. The first was that he needed to lie low. Luckily, his stunt in front of the school was enough to deter anyone from messing up with him so, he didn't have problems from that point of view.

The second reason was that the situation gave Sebastian a reason to stay out of his house after school time.

Sebastian's primary goal was to find the money to move his mother to another country, something she couldn't do even if she worked 12 hours a day.

Sebastian needed to give her a hand. For that reason, he decided to rob people. The Pyromancer had no moral rules, everything was licit and reasonable to achieve his goal.

So, he wasn't that troubled by his plan, or so at least he believed. The truth was that when he came back to the past; the man realized he wasn't as mad as he was before regressing. He wasn't that unconstrained and keen on killing.

Sebastian realized that his mother's and brother's death brought him close to the edge of madness, but that it was Rebecca's death that pushed him to the edge of the chasm.

That must have messed up with his brain's chemicals, because it was from there that he found almost orgasmic killing people.

That, of course, wasn't true anymore. He didn't feel the same urge to kill unless provoked, at least. Well, he thought that at least until he started robbing people.

<Let's see, who can I beat up today?>

Sebastian at that moment was roaming the street. It was already dark, and there were many criminals roaming around Exidia's streets.

Sebastian had spent a month hunting criminals and robbing them. It didn't even matter if they had some funny substances on them.

He quickly found someone to sell them and raise some quick cash. However, for some weird reason, he didn't kill them.

<Damn… I miss that brain's chemical mess up…>

The now young man noticed two men leaning on a wall. They had their hands in their pockets and were looking around.

<Uhhhhh… Candies! Those guys have some candies on them!> He put both his hands on his face and made a fake shocked expression.

<Just the crowd I was hoping to bump into on this lovely day!> Sebastian's eyes lightened up with a mix of mirth and madness, a grin spreading across his face. He was really excited while hunting.

Those guys were his favorite prey. They not only were usually loaded with money, but they also had the 'product' with them, from which he could make some more money.

"Good sirs!"

Sebastian chuckled to himself, as if he'd just stumbled upon old friends rather than a potentially dangerous encounter, showcasing just how delightfully off-kilter his world view was.

The two looked at Sebastian as if he was a psycho. To be honest, he looked like someone who was habitual with buying stuff from one of them.

"Pray tell, art thou brethren of the illustrious Cobalt Serpents, those storied vipers of the night?"

Sebastian asked them with a serious look, but his attempt to sound impressive just made him look silly, or crazy.

The two hoodlums exchanged glances, their faces a canvas of confusion.

The peculiar manner in which Sebastian had posed his question left them momentarily baffled, their minds racing to decipher the oddity before them.

It also became apparent to them that Sebastian was another client, albeit they never saw him. It was clear he frequented some of their comrades at least.

One of them, unable to contain his perplexity, turned to Sebastian. "What the hell are you saying?"

The directness of the question cut through the earlier theatrics, prompting Sebastian to drop the act.

"Ah. My manners! Sorry lads, I just wanted to ask if you were, by any chance, members of the Cobalt Serpents!"

They looked in each others' eyes again, but then nodded to Sebastian's question. They surmised Sebastian had approached them intending to buy their products.

"Bet you're here for some of the good stuff, huh?" one of them said, a smirk playing on his lips, assuming they had figured out his reason for having approached them.

"Indeed, good sirs, I have ventured hither with a purpose to extract a treasure from thee, yet not of the nature thou dost presume."

A malevolent grin unfurled across Sebastian's face, the prelude to the violence he was about to unleash.

In an instant, he descended upon the hoodlums with a ferocity that caught them wholly unprepared, their eyes widening in shock as they realized what the psycho in front of them was doing. He was trying to rob them.

With surgical precision, Sebastian struck at their most agonizing vulnerabilities. The first hoodlum emitted a stifled cry as an excruciating jolt surged through his elbow, Sebastian's fingers having expertly manipulated a nerve to render the limb numb and useless.

The second, in a futile attempt to defend himself, was swiftly incapacitated by a knee to the gut, the impact so severe it seemed to echo through the alley, leaving him gasping and crippled on the cold ground.

Their reactions morphed from disbelief to sheer agony. They collapsed, no longer able to stand, their bodies betraying them under the weight of pain and rage.

"Y—you w—will pay f—for this!"

"Yeah, yeah, send more people to search for me! Let's see if you can catch me!"

With a cold and sinister smile, Sebastian administered a final, brutal kick to each of their heads.

The sound of bone meeting shoe resounded, their consciousness fading into blackness under the force of his attack.

There, in the shadowed alley, Sebastian loomed over them, his breathing heavy due to the exertion, a dark grin plastered on his face. Then the grin turned into an innocent and almost angelical smile.

"Time to unveil the mystery of what lies under those fancy clothes—let's hope you're wearing your best undies!"