Chapter 256: Arrogant Tourist [Edited]
The southern cliffs of the island rose like jagged black teeth against the churning sea.
Down at the base of the limestone bluffs, where the waves crashed into foaming white spray, the entrance to the old smugglers’ cave was barely visible. It was a narrow, jagged fissure half-swallowed by the afternoon tide, hidden behind a curtain of hanging sea vines and salt-crusted rocks.
Nicholas and Selena followed the wet stone ledge toward the cave entrance. They barely spoke, only exchanging the occasional glance as they picked their way across the slippery rocks.
They slipped through the fissure, stepping out of the bright tropical sun and into the cool, damp gloom of the cavern.
The air smelled of brine, rotting kelp, and old diesel fuel. The narrow passage eventually opened into a wide underground chamber where the old smugglers had built a rough wooden dry-dock beside a dark pool. Rusted pulleys hung from the walls, and stacks of old cargo crates were scattered around several battered metal sheds.
Faint yellow light from a pair of halogen work lamps flickered against the damp limestone ceiling.
Standing on top of a stack of stolen shipping containers in the center of the dry-dock was Tide-Cutter Bane.
Bane was a thick, broad-shouldered man whose mutation had transformed the left side of his upper body into something resembling a giant crab. Dark reddish-brown plating covered his chest, shoulder, and arm, while his right forearm had become a thick nozzle that constantly leaked seawater onto the wooden boards. He looked less like a human with a mutation and more like someone had taken a dockworker and built a crustacean around him.
Bane was pacing back and forth, waving his heavy claw at a terrified local dockworker tied to a support pillar.
"Three hundred percent!" Bane barked, his voice echoing loudly off the cave walls with a wet, grating rattle. "You tell Gary and that useless constable that the tribute just tripled! If every merchant in Port Azure doesn’t deliver the silver by sundown, I’m not just breaking lobster traps anymore! I’ll blow the foundation off the festival piers and let the high tide drown the entire lower market!"
The bound worker groaned in fear, pulling frantically against the coarse rope.
Bane threw his head back and let out a harsh, theatrical laugh, clearly enjoying his own speech.
"This island belongs to Tide-Cutter Bane now! No hero from the mainland is coming all the way out to this rock to save you—"
"You talk too much," a flat, calm voice interrupted from the shadows near the entrance.
Bane’s laugh choked in his throat. He spun around, his heavy boots clattering against the metal container roof.
Stepping out from behind a row of wooden pallets, Nicholas and Selena walked into the pale halogen light.
𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺
Nicholas stepped into the pale light with his hands at his sides, looking almost absurdly relaxed for someone who had just walked into a smuggler’s hideout. Selena followed beside him, her expression calm as she looked around the chamber.
Bane stared at them, his tiny, bloodshot eyes darting between Nicholas’s plain clothes and Selena’s dark windbreaker.
A sneer curled across his scarred face.
"What’s this?" Bane mocked, tapping his heavy crustacean claw against his armored chest plate with a hollow, metallic thud. "A couple of lost tourists looking for a romantic cave tour? You picked the wrong tide, kids. Hand over your wallets and maybe I won’t turn you into chum."
"Tide-Cutter Bane," Selena said, her voice smooth and unimpressed. "Former low-level enforcer for a dock gang. Fled the mainland after an illegal extortion ring collapsed. Currently a negligible threat"
Bane’s sneer vanished, replaced by an ugly scowl. "Who the hell are you calling negligible?!"
"I’m giving you one chance to untie that worker, surrender your stolen cargo, and sit quietly until the local constable arrives," Selena continued, unbothered. "It will save you a trip to the medical ward."
"You arrogant little brat!" Bane roared.
His mutated right arm suddenly tensed. Water rushed through the swollen veins along his shoulder before gathering inside the nozzle at the end of his forearm. A moment later, the whole arm shuddered with pressure.
"Nicholas," Selena called from behind him, watching Bane’s arm tense. "He’s slower when he fires. Watch his left side."
Nicholas glanced at her.
"Got it." he replied quietly.
"DIE, TOURISTS!"
BOOM!
A high-pressure jet of compressed seawater erupted from Bane’s forearm with the force of a hydraulic industrial cutter. The blast sheared through the air with a deafening screech, obliterating the wooden pallet where Nicholas had been standing half a second prior. Splinters of wood and pressurized water sprayed across the cave wall, gouging a deep trench in the solid stone.
Nicholas was already gone.
Nicholas didn’t need to use any of his stronger abilities. His body was more than enough.
The instant Bane’s shoulder moved, Nicholas knew where he was aiming. He sidestepped with a low, clean pivot, his rubber-soled boots catching the wet cave floor without slipping an inch.
BOOM!
A second water blast exploded against the stone floor, tearing a chunk out of the dock.
Bane fired again, but Nicholas was already somewhere else. Another blast tore through the cave, leaving a jagged scar in the stone. Bane stared at the empty space in front of him, his breathing growing heavier. He had expected the tourists to run. Instead, the man was walking toward him as if none of this mattered.
Nicholas slipped beneath the spray and kept moving forward. The blasts tore through the cave behind him, but he seemed almost unconcerned, bending and twisting around each one without ever breaking his stride. Not a single drop touched his shirt.
Bane panicked, sweeping his mutated arm in a frantic, wide arc. "Hold still, you slippery rat!"
BOOM! BOOM!
Jets of water tore through the hanging lanterns and smashed empty wooden barrels to pieces, but Nicholas simply dipped his shoulder, slipping cleanly through the gaps between the water streams with effortless agility.
Not a single drop touched him, and every movement carried him closer to Bane.
By the time Bane realized what was happening, Nicholas was already at the containers.
He planted his foot on the lip of a low crate, using the upward momentum to vault lightly onto the top of the shipping container, landing directly inside Bane’s guard.
Bane swung his massive, armored left claw with all his strength, swinging the massive claw toward Nicholas’s head.
"Get off me!"
"Above you!" Selena’s sharp voice rang out from below.
Nicholas ducked under the heavy, lumbering swing. The jagged claw whistled harmlessly through empty air over his head, leaving the impure’s bulky torso wide open and overextended.
Nicholas didn’t draw his blades.
He stepped inside the reach of the claw, planting his lead foot firmly on the rusted metal roof, his dark blue eyes completely cold and focused.
"Your stance is too wide," Nicholas said softly, his fist pulling back as a faint, concentrated hum of pure Qi gathered across his knuckles. "And you talk too much."