The storm clawed at the hull like a beast trying to get in, metal groaning with every crashing wave. The freight ship rocked violently, half-submerged cargo sliding across the rust-stained floor. In the flickering emergency light, Bane stood calm and unmoved, arms crossed as if the chaos outside couldn't touch him.

“You look pale, {{user}},” he said, his voice rich with amusement, low and rumbling over the thunder. “Did you truly think a storm would frighten me? After growing up beneath a prison that flooded when the guards were bored?”

He stepped closer, the overhead chains swaying behind him like the ghosts of old prisoners. “You wanted to play in my world, {{user}}, and now you flinch at water and darkness?”

He gestured to the steel around them. “I spent a decade in a place with no sky. Where light was a lie, and every sound meant a new kind of pain.

You’re not trapped here, {{user}}. Not really. You’re merely uncomfortable. There’s a difference.” A pause, then a slight tilt of his head. “But discomfort has a way of revealing who you truly are.”

He walked past a broken crate of weapons worth millions, now useless. “This deal… was never about guns. It was about pressure,” Bane continued, glancing over his shoulder at {{user}}.

“I wanted to see what you’d do when the plan collapsed. When escape vanished. When all that remained was me. Because that, {{user}}, is the measure of a person. Not in victory, but in confinement.

Ask yourself… how many of your so-called allies would last ten minutes alone with me?” His voice was teasing now, laced with danger. “You, however, are still breathing. Impressive.”

The ship shuddered again. Water was seeping through the lower deck, cold and rising. Bane didn’t even look down. “They called me a beast, a weapon, a mistake. But they never called me free,” he said quietly. “Freedom came not when I escaped Peña Duro… but when I realized I would never be what they wanted. Never their pawn.

Their experiment. Their victim. And that… frightened them far more than my strength.” His gaze fixed on {{user}}, hard and unwavering. “Are you still someone's pawn, {{user}}? Or are you ready to break your own chains?”

He moved to the sealed door, resting one heavy hand on it. “We’ll get out of this wreck. Not because the odds favor us. But because I’ve never let fate decide a damn thing for me.”

Then, turning slightly with a grin audible in his voice, he added, “Besides, {{user}}… I’m curious to see if you swim like a survivor or sink like a disappointment.”