Māui hit the last stretch of stone like it owed him money.
The slope down to the coast was a jagged spine of old lava and stubborn grass, and he took it at a run—bare feet finding purchase where the rock wanted him to slip, Hook held low so it wouldn't catch the wind and wrench his shoulder. Below, the neon shoreline was no longer a quiet, distant sparkle.
It was chaos.
Red strobes pulsed along the waterfront. Sirens layered over each other until they became one long metallic howl. People spilled out of seaside restaurants and promenade stalls, some filming, some screaming, most running without knowing where "safe" actually was.
And the ocean—
The bay had turned wrong.
A dark bloom spread across the water like spilled ink, but it moved with intention, branching out in thin, fast veins that raced across waves, leaping from crest to crest without the normal drag of current. Wherever it touched, the surface lost its shimmer. The sea became matte. Hungry.
Māui's tattoos tightened again—an instinctive warning—then shifted like a school of fish changing direction. A spiral pattern crawled from his shoulder toward his forearm, stopping just short of the wrist as if it didn't want to get too close to the Hook.
That got his attention.
"You don't like it," he murmured. "Noted."
He reached the final ledge above the promenade and stopped short.
The shoreline defenses were already deploying.
Tall pylons rose out of recessed docks like spears. Drone lights—cold blue—cut through mist. And a line of armored responders formed a barrier between the panicked civilians and the bay: dark uniforms, plated vests, face shields lit with data, rifles that weren't bows and weren't spears and definitely weren't anything Māui had ever stolen from a god.
Two heavy rigs rolled into position behind them—boxy machines with articulated arms and thick hoses coiled like sleeping serpents.
Water cannons.
Māui's mouth tightened.
"Of course," he muttered. "You fight water with more water."
He vaulted down to the promenade.
Concrete hit his soles. The surface was smooth in a way stone shouldn't be, and his legs adjusted automatically, posture shifting to keep balance. Everything smelled like salt, smoke, engine heat… and fear.
A child stumbled in the crowd—small, barefoot, crying—caught by the crush of bodies.
Māui moved without thinking. He slipped into the flow like a shark through a school, caught the child under the arms and lifted him up over the tangle of elbows and panic.
"Hey," Māui said, voice low, calm, ancient. "Eyes here. Breathe."
The child's face was slick with tears. He stared at Māui's tattoos and the Hook and went rigid with shock.
Māui turned and placed the child into a woman's arms—mother, maybe aunt—who clutched him like he was air.
"Move uphill," Māui ordered. "Not along the shore. Up."
She blinked, startled by the authority in his voice, then nodded and pushed into the crowd, dragging the child with her.
Māui straightened and finally looked at the line of armored responders.
They looked back.
Then one of them raised a hand.
"Unknown male—high threat profile!" a voice snapped through a loudspeaker, distorted but sharp. "Stop where you are. Place the weapon on the ground. Hands visible."
Māui paused.
The word weapon annoyed him more than it should have. The Hook was a tool. A promise. A piece of the world that obeyed him only because he'd made it obey.
He lifted his free hand slowly—palm open, empty.
"I'm not here for you," he called, voice carrying over the sirens. "I'm here for that."
He nodded toward the bay.
The responders didn't relax.
One of them stepped forward—helmeted, visor glowing with scrolling symbols, posture too controlled to be fear and too tense to be calm.
"Last warning," the loudspeaker said. "Drop the weapon."
Māui tilted his head, listening not just to the words but to what sat behind them: rules, training, the kind of fear that had been polished into procedure.
A leader.
He could work with leaders.
The armored figure removed her helmet.
A woman in her late twenties or early thirties, hair yanked back tight, face marked by sleeplessness and salt-stained discipline. A small comm device hugged her jaw.
Her eyes locked on the Hook.
Then flicked to his tattoos.
Then back to the Hook.
"You're not on the registry," she said, voice amplified by her collar mic now that she was closer. "No ID, no transponder, no ping. You show up out of nowhere carrying a flaming… axe-hook thing… while we have an active shoreline incident."
Māui stared at her for a heartbeat.
"Registry," he repeated, tasting the word like it might bite. "Transponder."
"You're a parahuman?" she demanded. "Or a cult actor with illegal tech? Either way—drop it."
Māui's gaze slid past her to the bay.
The black stain was still spreading.
It hit the first set of pilings under the boardwalk.
And it didn't stop.
The dark climbed the wet supports like it was climbing a ladder, soaking upward, turning the wood's surface slick and shadowed. The boardwalk lights flickered.
Māui pointed.
"It's climbing," he said flatly. "It will reach your people first."
The woman's eyes flicked to the pilings. She swore under her breath and tapped her comm.
"Coastal Unit Bravo, hold line. Heavy rigs, prime water cannons—"
"No!" Māui snapped, louder than he intended.
Every head turned.
The woman's gaze sharpened. "You don't get to give orders."
Māui took one step forward.
The responders reacted instantly—rifles raising, drones pivoting, a net-launcher arm unfolding on one of the rigs.
Māui stopped again, held his palm out.
"I'm telling you the truth," he said, voice clipped now. "That thing moves through liquid. You spray it with water, you're handing it a road."
The woman's jaw clenched.
"Science team says it's a contaminant," she shot back. "We dilute, we push it back, we—"
The bay erupted.
Not in a wave. In a lift—a bulge of darkness pushing up as if the sea itself was standing.
A smooth, glistening shape broke the surface again, taller this time, less like a creature and more like a column of living night. It leaned toward the promenade.
Then split—branching into three thinner columns that slapped onto the wet shoreline rocks, each one oozing forward with quick, purposeful slides.
The nearest responder fired.
A burst of light—blue-white—hit the leading column.
The column did not bleed. It didn't scream.
It drank the impact, surface shimmering, then surged faster.
The line wavered.
"Prime the cannons!" someone shouted.
Māui's tattoos crawled—fast now—like they wanted to rip free and swim.
He didn't let them.
"Stop," he said again, lower, fierce. "Do not feed it water."
The woman hesitated for the first time.
It was a tiny pause.
But Māui saw it.
And then procedure crushed hesitation.
The heavy rigs roared to life.
Water cannons swung into position.
The first jet fired—white, powerful, pressurized—slamming into the dark columns and blasting them back toward the bay.
For half a second, it looked like it worked.
The crowd cheered somewhere behind the responders.
Then the water jet turned black mid-stream.
Not splashed black. Not mixed black.
It became black, as if the darkness had slid into the hose and claimed the pressure from the inside.
The jet pivoted—almost eagerly—toward the responders themselves.
Māui's eyes narrowed.
"Called it," he growled.
The black water struck the frontline like a whip, splattering across armor, pooling at boots, and instantly racing up shin plates toward knees.
Responders screamed and stumbled back, slapping at their legs as if they could brush it off.
But the darkness didn't stick like mud.
It flowed like it belonged.
The woman—leader—lunged to yank one of her people backward, but the black water had already found the next wet surface: a puddle on the concrete, a spilled drink, a knocked-over cooler.
It jumped again.
Liquid to liquid.
Road to road.
Māui moved.
He surged forward, not at the darkness, but at the cannon rig.
A responder tried to block him—rifle raised.
Māui didn't strike him. He hooked the rifle with his left hand, twisted, and the weapon spun out of the man's grip without breaking a finger. Then Māui slammed the Hook's curved point into the cannon's nozzle assembly.
Heat poured out.
Not flame—heat. A deep, brutal warmth like the sun's anger pressed into metal.
The water in the nozzle flashed.
Steam blasted outward, white and roaring, forcing everyone back.
The black in the hose hit the sudden wall of vapor and hesitated—literally slowed—as if the lack of liquid confused it.
Māui yanked the Hook free and swung the rig's hose upward, away from people, using raw strength like it was nothing.
The hose bucked wildly, spraying blackened water in a high arc out over the bay.
The darkness tried to follow.
But the spray hit open air, broke into mist, and the black thinned—less confident—dropping as oily specks that hissed when they hit hot metal, congealing into dull clots.
Not dead.
But slowed.
Māui turned sharply toward the second rig.
It was already firing.
It was already turning black.
He leapt—clearing five meters like it was a shallow ditch—and slammed the Hook into the second nozzle.
Steam exploded again.
The jet died.
The darkness inside the hose surged, seeking another liquid.
It found the rig's internal coolant reservoir.
The machine's side panel darkened—like bruising metal.
Māui's tattoos tightened to the point of pain.
"Stop using water!" he barked over his shoulder. "All of you! Foam! Powder! Sand! Anything dry!"
The woman stared at him, breathing hard, eyes wide with the realization she didn't want to have.
"You're… not with the cults," she said, voice raw. "What the hell are you?"
Māui didn't look at her. He was watching the shoreline.
The black columns had retreated from the steam, but now they were spreading sideways, hunting for new wet places: the harbor's fountain, the open drain grates, the line of fire hydrants along the promenade.
"The city's veins," Māui muttered.
He felt it then—through the ground, through the wetness in cracks, through the salt air.
The darkness was listening.
Learning.
Finding routes.
If it got into the water system—
Māui's jaw clenched.
He'd fought monsters that ate flesh. Gods that ate pride. Spirits that ate names.
This thing ate roads.
He turned to the woman and finally gave her his full attention.
"I am Māui-tikitiki," he said, voice cutting through siren noise like a blade. "I have dragged land out of ocean. I have beaten daylight into patience. I do not belong to your… registry."
Her mouth opened—half disbelief, half exhausted hope.
Then training snapped back into place.
"Lieutenant Mara Vance," she said automatically, as if naming herself anchored her. "Coastal Response Division."
Māui nodded once. Names mattered.
"Lieutenant," he said. "If you keep fighting it with water, you will lose your shore and your people."
She swallowed. "Then tell me what to do."
That was the moment Māui decided she was worth saving too.
He pointed toward the promenade's supply kiosks and maintenance sheds.
"Dry things," he said. "Salt. Sand. Powder. Nets. Ropes. Anything that doesn't flow."
Mara snapped into motion.
"All units!" she shouted into her comm. "Cease water deployment. Switch to dry suppression and physical barriers. Get me sandbags, dry chem, whatever we have. Cut the fountains. Shut the hydrants. Shut everything!"
A responder looked at her like she'd gone insane. "Lieutenant, the hydrants are city-controlled!"
"Then smash them!" she roared. "I don't care! Cut the water!"
Māui almost smiled.
Good.
The darkness surged again—toward the fountains.
Someone had left a decorative pool running near the boardwalk entrance, its surface rippling peacefully like it didn't understand it was about to become a highway.
The black reached it.
The pool's water turned midnight in a single, violent inhale.
And then it rose—forming a smooth dome that pushed outward, expanding toward the street.
Māui ran straight at it.
A responder shouted, "Don't—!"
Māui jumped onto a nearby bench, then onto the fountain's stone lip, Hook raised high.
He brought it down not into the water but into the stone beside the pool.
The Hook glowed.
Heat surged into the rock.
The wet stone hissed and steamed. Water along the edge boiled away, leaving behind a crust of salt and mineral residue—dry, chalky, rough.
The black dome hit that crust and shuddered, surface rippling like it had hit invisible teeth.
It pushed again.
Slower.
Māui's eyes narrowed.
"So you don't like dry ground," he murmured. "You want the slip. The flow."
He dragged the Hook along the stone lip, carving a glowing line as he went, boiling a continuous ring—drying the border, leaving a pale crust.
The black dome pressed against it, then slid sideways, searching for a break.
Māui didn't give it one.
Behind him, Mara's people hauled sandbags and dumped them in a crude barrier line, forming a second dry wall to back his first. Others sprayed white clouds of dry chemical extinguisher powder—not water—over wet pavement, turning it into gritty paste that didn't flow.
The black hesitated again, caught between two ugly, stubborn lines of not-liquid.
Māui breathed out, steadying.
This was familiar.
Not the tech. Not the city.
But the principle.
Catch what runs. Slow what burns. Turn an unstoppable thing into something that can be handled.
A drone buzzed overhead. A speaker crackled.
"Unidentified—stand down. You are interfering with emergency operations."
Mara looked up and snarled, "He just saved my whole line! Shut up!"
Māui didn't care about the drone. He cared about the bay.
Because the sky spiral above the city had begun to rotate faster, brightening until it looked like a giant eye opening.
And as it brightened, the black tide below grew more confident—its movements sharper, quicker, like a predator smelling fresh blood.
A streak of light fell from the sky—no longer a gentle shooting star, but a burning fragment, bright enough to cast shadows across the promenade.
It vanished behind the city skyline.
A second streak followed.
Then a third.
Māui's tattoos writhed.
Mara stared up, face drained. "Those weren't meteors."
"No," Māui said grimly. "They were answers."
The black dome at the fountain suddenly flattened, then surged forward again—not against Māui's crust, but toward a new wet line: the street gutters.
Water.
Moving water.
Flowing water.
Māui's eyes flashed.
"Lieutenant!" he snapped. "Your drains lead where?"
Mara's face went tight. "The pumping station. The reservoirs. The whole city."
Māui felt something cold settle behind his ribs.
If the darkness reached the pumping station, it wouldn't need the ocean anymore.
It would have the city.
Māui turned, Hook blazing.
"Then we stop it here," he said.
Mara's gaze flicked to him. "How?"
Māui looked at the bay, at the fountains, at the glowing towers, at the roadways slick with sea mist and spilled drinks and firefighting runoff.
Then he looked at the maintenance sheds along the promenade—the ones packed with ropes, nets, tarps, and the simplest tools mortals had always used to fight the sea.
His mouth curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"The old way," he said. "The way that works when the world gets too clever."
The black tide lunged for the gutter.
Māui ran to intercept—
—and the lights along the entire promenade flickered at once, as if the city itself had just inhaled.
Somewhere deeper inland, a water tower alarm began to howl.
Mara's comm crackled with a voice edged in panic.
"Lieutenant—pumping station sensors just spiked. Something's in the intake. It's moving fast."
Māui didn't slow.
He didn't hesitate.
He just tightened his grip on the Hook and sprinted toward the city's veins, chasing a monster that had finally found a way off the sea.