The Hybrid Mage

William Tammer stood and watched the fishing boats pull out of the harbor. It was early in the morning, the sun having not yet breached the horizon, but was still light enough to see. He held a pipe in his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke. He didn't smoke anything particularly strong; his wife had made him quit. Still, he liked to stand at the docks before the sun came up. It was one of the few times he was able to relax in this god forsaken city, too bad it couldn't last. He looked passed the fishing vessels and spotted his target. A warship, the USS Galant. His crew had been looking for bigger jobs, hoping to make a big name for themselves. Sure, William had his own reputation, but his crew wasn't respected by the three big crime families running the slums. If they were ever going to make it big, they needed to think big, and that meant stealing a shipment of imported goods from an Ironclad. He had good intel that the ship was carrying valuable spices and silks from China, but you never could trust people in the slums. For all he knew that ship could be holding empty wooden crates. Regardless of his doubts, it was just about time for his team to move in. He took another swig from his pipe, walking along the edge of the wooden docks. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and walked with his chin up and shoulders back. To the blind eye he would look like a dockmaster or at the very least, someone who was too important to bother. He didn't have to look too hard to see Winston following behind him, head down, holding a cane that looked was slightly too expensive for the slums. His partner wore a traditional grey suit, while William himself wore a suit that looked a lot more expensive than it actually was, along with his lucky brown coat matched with a brown bowler hat. The other members of his crew would be in the general area of the warship, waiting for William's signal. He made his way, slowly but surely, to a large pile of crates no more than seventy feet away from the vessel. Navy men walked about the deck of the ship, while straights guarded the vicinity around the boat. It would be impossible for normal thieves to pull this off, or even get on the same dock without being arrested. Thankfully, William's crew weren't what you would consider normal. He pulled his left hand out of his jacket pocket, a needle filled with his blood in his hand. He stabbed the needle into his chest with a wince and injected the blood into his body. Due to a chemical agent mixed with the injected blood, his body was on the verge of exploding. No more than a quarter of a second later, William was inside the warship's hold. He didn't waste any time. William bolted towards a sailor in front of him, cutting the man's throat with a short dagger. The sailor dropped onto the metal floor making a loud bang that echoed through the ship. Two men in front of William looked back at him, eyes growing wide. William didn't give them a chance to yell, in the blink of an eye he was at their backs. He stabbed his dagger deep into the neck of the first sailor, dropping them both to the floor. The other man yelled in horror, alerting the rest of the ship. William cursed as the second man tackled him, trying to pin him to the floor. William struggled underneath the sailor, the man was skinny, but was able to keep William's arms from taking his dagger. William focused and in an instant, he was standing above the sailor, who was now laying in a pool of his friend's blood, staining his once white uniform. William grabbed the pistol in his belt and fired off three quick shots into the sailors back. Yells came from all around him, men running around the metal warship, either fleeing or looking for the source. Their yells were quickly drowned in a sea of gunfire. His crew was on the ship. William closed his eyes and let his ears find the storage room, mentally mapping the layout of the ship in his mind. He found the room he was looking for, large, beneath the deck, boxes of some sort stacked in neat rows. Checking to make sure he had enough blood left in his body, William teleported one last time. Opening his eyes, he found himself in the warship's storage hold, standing in front of a dozen large wooden crates. He walked up to the nearest crate and cracked open the top, then froze. His crew soon came to the storage room using a ladder. Winston walked up beside William, looking at what the crate held.

"Well, that's a problem." Winston said as the others gathered around William. "I'd say your intel was way off the rocker on this one William." No silks or spices were inside the crates, no machine parts or guns. Shining bars of gold were stacked to the very top of the crate, and from what William could see, every other crate was the same.