Lakasha, the human trafficking supervisor, had already heard the first, sharp volley of three gunshots. Now, as he reached for the antidote vial in the aft cabin, the sound of the second, lone gunshot—the one that silenced the man pinned to the bulkhead—jolted him.
He frowned, his internal alarms screaming that this was no simple drunken brawl. The volume and the cold precision of the firing meant a professional, or something far worse, was on board.
He quickly pocketed the crucial vial of antidote—needed to rouse and prepare the women for delivery—reached for his customized Heckler & Koch pistol, released the safety, and cautiously moved toward the front cabin door.
The young woman beside him, the one he had carelessly tossed aside while distracted, had already taken a dose of the antidote meant to keep her pliable. Though she still felt dizzy and weak, the sudden trauma of the repeated, deafening gunshots, combined with the drug's short half-life, was rapidly restoring her physical and mental awareness.
She didn't shout or scream. Instead, she opened her eyes fully and first glanced at her surroundings. Apart from herself, the other dozen or so women were still unconscious, bound with heavy rope.
She saw Lakasha, a man whose face was etched with cruelty, standing rigid at the door, gun drawn, his attention completely focused on the corridor. She knew instantly Lakasha was the enemy. If he was this vigilant, then whatever was happening beyond that door might be the only, slender thread of hope they had.
Still feeling the sluggish weakness in her limbs, she tried to stand up, intending to silently creep up behind Lakasha and perhaps, with a desperate burst of adrenaline, shove him or delay his action.
Lakasha, his senses honed by years of illicit smuggling, kept a wary eye on the main cabin hatch. He was attempting to discreetly call Rice's phone to check on the situation outside, completely unaware of the young woman slowly moving behind him. The phone only hissed static.
Leo witnessed the entire silent drama unfold in his Golden Eyes. The girl's slow, courageous movement was going to get her killed instantly. He sighed internally—he had zero patience for unnecessary complications.
He reached into his small backpack and pulled out the smooth, gold-titanium alloy mask he had created. It snapped over his face, hiding everything but his mouth and part of his chin, instantly transforming him from a boy into a silver and gold demon of justice.
Leo paused just a few steps from the door. Instead of kicking it in, he gently tapped the iron door with a finger. The heavy, bolted hatch, already weakened by years of sea corrosion, immediately obeyed the precise molecular commands of his Metal Control. It slammed violently to the left along its hinges, tearing a deep groove into the adjacent bulkhead.
Lakasha was standing precisely to the left of the door; the hatch didn't hit him directly, but it missed his face by mere centimeters. He gripped his gun tighter, heart pounding, ready to fire the moment the attacker stepped through the open doorway.
However, the hatch did not stop its movement. While it remained pressed hard against the wall on one side, all the connection points on the other side of the hinge suddenly snapped. The massive, heavy door panel continued to roll violently to the left, hitting the bulkhead with a deafening CRASH.
To Lakasha's horrified surprise, he was slammed against the wall by a massive, metal door panel that struck him in the back of the head. The concussion instantly blacked out the brutal man, sending him sliding unconscious to the floor.
The girl who was about to get up and pounce on Lakasha was equally shocked. She stared wide-eyed at Lakasha lying defeated on the ground, then looked at the gaping doorway, completely at a loss, unsure whether to be terrified or relieved. She was intensely wary of the figure about to enter.
Leo, standing at 1.4 meters tall, walked in wearing the ordinary silver mask and carrying the small backpack. He ignored the stunned girl for a moment, moving past her to Lakasha's prone body. He reached into the unconscious man's pocket, retrieved the antidote, and without a word, tossed the vial to the girl. He followed the vial with a small, sharpened combat knife he'd created from a piece of internal wire.
He then spoke to her in slightly stilted, but clear, English, the language he was most used to. "This is the antidote. Use it. First, make sure they all wake up and are safe."
She caught the vial and the knife instinctively. Seeing that her immediate safety was assured, Leo simply grabbed the collar of the unconscious Lakasha and dragged him roughly out into the narrow corridor.
The six men Leo had left bleeding in the lounge were now silent, their struggles over. They had died slowly and painfully from their slashed throats, their faces frozen in expressions of agonizing regret.
A silver metal spike flew out of Leo's wrist and pierced Lakasha's right thigh, twisting deeply.
"Ah!!"
The black man, Lakasha, screamed in an immediate, sharp burst of pain that was cut short by Leo's cold, unyielding stare. Leo simply stood over him, saying nothing, his mask gleaming under the flickering bulb.
The screams gradually subsided to ragged, pained gasps. Another metal spike appeared and pierced Lakasha's left thigh, pinning him completely to the steel floor.
"Ulysses Klaue," Leo stated, his voice distorted and amplified slightly by the mask, making it deep and unnerving. "Where is he? Tell me exactly what he's doing."
"Klaue? What Klaue are you talking about, brat? I don't know any Klaue!" Lakasha was still trying to pretend ignorance. Unlike the defeated, terrified men inside, he hadn't fully witnessed Leo's power and felt a shred of bravado remain when faced with a child only 1.4 meters tall.
Leo didn't waste another word. He turned the metal spike in the man's left thigh just enough to create an intolerable, burning pain, then materialized a pistol in his hand, pressing the barrel against the bleeding muscle.
Bang! "Ah!!"
The pistol was instantly pressed against the man's forehead. "I will not ask again. Here is another chance. Speak properly and truthfully."
"Boss Klaue is at the Salvador Grand Port, not far from here, only about five kilometers away," Lakasha immediately confessed, the pain and the gunshot close to his head finally shattering his resolve. "We'll be there soon to dock. If you need, I can take you there."
Lakasha forced a painful, pathetic smile up at Leo.
"What's going on with these women inside? The women you took from Yemen?" Leo demanded, his voice hardening, pressing for the full truth.
"It's...it's..."
Bang!
A smoking bullet hole appeared next to Lakasha's ear, shattering the steel bulkhead and releasing a burst of steam from a nearby pipe.
"Business is business! Boss Klaue doesn't handle these small businesses, he put me in charge! Today's delivery and the party is for me to send some women over to the buyers waiting at the port! These women were all captured in Saudi Arabia and Yemen today!"
Lakasha screamed the information, his voice cracking with fear. They start shooting at the drop of a hat; who wouldn't be completely broken by that level of casual brutality?
Leo frowned, a wave of disgust washing over him. The connection was solid: Ulysses Klaue, the arms dealer, was the head of a massive, despicable smuggling and trafficking operation.
"Why are we having a 'party' at the port?" Leo asked, trying to filter the necessary strategic information from the man's terror.
"It seems so... A batch of goods came in today," Lakasha whimpered, his eyes fixed on the gun muzzle, "very valuable goods, but we don't know exactly what they are. We're just his employees. He's finalizing the deal. You can go find him, I can take you there!"
"Go to hell!"
Bang!
The final execution was swift and cold. The leader of this despicable kidnapping gang died instantly, the bullet silencing his pathetic pleas. Lakasha's hand, which had been concealed behind his back, dropped to his sides, revealing a small, steel dagger he had been desperately trying to pull free. Leo simply stepped over the cooling body.
The two metal spikes obediently followed Leo as he walked back towards the rear cabin. They touched each other in the air, spinning rapidly to fling off the bloodstains, before returning to the needle pouch magically hidden at Leo's waist.
Turning to the women who were gradually and weakly standing up in the rear cabin, Leo saw the girl he had tossed the antidote to working quickly. She was using the dagger he had provided to cut the ropes on the others, giving each a small, measured dose of the antidote Lakasha had brought. They were still shaky, but conscious.
The first Malaysian woman to fully wake up—the one who had tried to ambush Lakasha—came over, looking at Leo with tears in her eyes. "Thank you," she whispered, her voice husky. "I don't know who you are, but I'm very grateful. You saved all of us."
"Just tell me, where are you all from? How are you going to get back?" Leo asked, the gold mask still covering his face.
"I'm a tour guide named Yitian," she said, managing to regain some of her professional composure despite the circumstances. "I speak a little Mandarin, and I am a Malaysian citizen. I led a group of eleven people on a pilgrimage trip from Japan. Nine of them are here now. The rest of us come from different tour groups, all kidnapped in Saudi Arabia and Yemen."
"Wait, can you sail a boat?" Leo asked, pulling out his phone and accessing a naval map.
Yitian, confused by the sudden question, hesitated. "Well, I know the basics, but this ship is massive. We're still hundreds of kilometers from any safe port. We were kidnapped from Yemen. It's about 300 kilometers as the crow flies from here to the coast of Yemen."
Leo scanned the other women. "Are there others? Korean? Thai?"
Yi Tian stepped forward and began negotiating with each person, communicating not only in fluent Japanese but also in basic Korean and Thai. The response was a weak, terrified murmur of confirmation.
"These people are mostly tourists. It's peak tourist season now. The other group comes from two other tour groups, also kidnapped from the regions around Saudi Arabia and Yemen," Yitian reported back, her voice now firming up with purpose.
Leo glanced at the ship's ancient fuel gauge; only one-fifth of the fuel remained. He did a quick mental calculation of the distance to the Arabian Peninsula. At this old ship's speed, they would be sitting ducks long before they reached safety, and he couldn't just drop them off in the middle of a war zone.
"Forget the fuel," Leo declared, making an immediate, impossible decision. "I'll take you back to safety myself. Yemen is too volatile. We'll aim for the coast of Oman or an established Saudi port—a place with an actual government presence."
He turned to the group of now conscious, tearful women. "I am going to get you out of here now. This ship is going to fly. You must stay inside, sit on the floor, and hold onto anything you can find. Do not move, and do not panic."
Before anyone could fully process the insanity of his statement, Leo deactivated his mask, which folded back seamlessly into his backpack. He walked out of the cabin and climbed the external ladder to the top deck. He then walked to the very center of the ship, directly above the main engine room.
Leo spread his arms wide and closed his eyes.
The raw, terrifying power of his perfected Metal Control—now refined to the level of molecular manipulation—poured out of him like a golden, silent wave. The entire, massive steel hull of the aging cruise ship began to hum, vibrating gently as every metallic atom came under his command.
The steel ship, which weighed thousands of tons, began to float.
With a great, agonizing shudder that echoed through the entire structure, the cruise ship silently lifted out of the water, shedding the sea in cascades of foam and spray. It rose higher, ten meters, twenty meters, then thirty meters above the dark, churning Arabian Sea. The propellers, now spinning uselessly in the air, suddenly stopped.
The women inside screamed initially, a collective, panicked cry, but Yitian, having witnessed his power against Lakasha, quickly calmed them down, pointing at the miraculously floating vessel.
Leo stood on the top of the ship, focusing entirely on maintaining the perfect structural integrity of the hull while generating the powerful, directional thrust needed for flight. The ship wasn't streamlined for air travel, but Leo compensated by generating a massive, directed cushion of magnetic repulsion beneath the vessel, effectively making it surf on a field of pure kinetic energy.
He glanced at his phone, setting a course that would take them across the Arabian Sea and aim for the coast of Oman, far from the conflict zones of Yemen.
The entire ship, defying all laws of physics and aerodynamics, abruptly accelerated. It flew smoothly and swiftly close to the sea surface, a black behemoth carving a silent path through the night sky, its goal: safety for the hostages, and the ultimate destruction of Ulysses Klaue.
Leo sat down cross-legged on the top deck, now acting as the ship's engine, its thruster, and its pilot. He felt the intense drain on his mental energy required to sustain flight for such a massive object over hundreds of kilometers, but the adrenaline and the memory of Miller's confessions kept him focused.
Klaue is at Salvador Grand Port. He has the Vibranium. And he thinks he's safe.
The flying cruise ship, an improbable sight of salvation, sped toward its destination—a collision course with the arms dealer who had unknowingly crossed the path of the one man the Sorcerer Supreme could not see in time.