Back in the kitchen, Cole Vance slammed the half-kneaded dough onto the cutting board.
Gary, the owner, stood right beside him, his gut pressing against Cole’s shoulder through a faded work shirt.
The clammy heat and grease of that thick roll of fat radiated off him with unsettling clarity.
The owner’s wife circled around to his left.
Her red-nailed fingers were clawing at his apron strings, her thick-lipped, lipstick-smeared mouth stretched wide to reveal a gold-capped tooth.
Cole raised his left hand.
He slapped her right across the face with a backhand.
It wasn’t a huge movement—just a quick flick of the wrist, his fingertips skimming her heavily powdered cheekbones.
The sound was crisp, like snapping a fresh carrot in half.
She stumbled back two steps, her high heels emitting an ear-splitting screech against the tile floor.
Her back slammed into the shelving rack, causing a bag of flour to wobble precariously without falling.
Four red welts rose on her face, and a chunk of lipstick flaked off the gold tooth at the corner of her mouth.
Before Gary could even open his mouth, Cole’s right hand whipped out.
Another backhand, same wrist action.
Gary’s face was fleshier than his wife’s, producing a duller thud—like slapping an over-proofed mound of dough.
His head jerked violently to the right, the fat beneath his chin wobbling as he stumbled back a step.
His lower back slammed into the edge of the baking oven, letting out a scalded yell.
Silence hung over the kitchen for about half a second.
Inside Cole’s head, the system’s alarms squealed like a boiling kettle.
“I know what I did wasn’t right, but if I didn’t do it, I’d never get over the anger, alright?” Cole tried to reason with the system.
The owner’s wife reacted first.
Clutching her face with tears of pain welling in her eyes, her heavily lipsticked mouth gaped into an irregular oval.
“You—you hit me?!
You hit me!”
Her voice was so shrill it sounded like nails scraping down a baking tray, absurdly loud.
Yet as she screeched, the system’s alarm notifications finally stopped flashing.
Gary’s reaction was a beat slower, but far more direct.
He glanced down at his flour-stained apron, then looked up at Cole, his expression shifting from confusion to blind rage—like a bloated pig finally realizing it had been kicked.
He clenched his fists, the coarse black hairs on his knuckles straining tight.
Cole even had enough time to count exactly how many hairs there were.
Through his Spider-Sense, that fleshy fist moved as agonizingly slow as a starving snail.
He even had time for an internal Roast Battle comment: *You run a bakery, shouldn’t your hands be covered in flour?
Why are they smeared in machine grease instead?*
*Do you actually do any work at all?*
*How is this crappy bakery even still in business when the bread tastes so terrible?*
Cole sidestepped.
The movement was tiny, just enough for the sweat-reeking fist to graze past his ear.
Thud.
The fist slammed into the sheet metal of the oven, letting out a heavy clang.
The oven door popped open a crack, releasing a blast of heat as the row of baguettes inside visibly collapsed.
“Argh!”
Gary’s agonizing howl pierced through the flour-dusted air, sounding like a groundhog that had just gotten its tail stepped on.
The system began chiming the prelude to another warning.
Cole immediately threw on a terrified expression, waving his hands frantically in the air.
“Oh dear, Boss!
Are you okay?
Why did you attack me?
The oven is innocent!
It bakes bread for you every day!
How could you hit it so hard?
Don’t you think it hurts?!”
As he spoke, Cole took a deliberate “stumble,” shifting his center of gravity forward with complete natural ease.
He drove his elbow upward, catching Gary cleanly right beneath the chin.
The system shut up.
Self-defense at its finest.
Crack.
Gary’s head snapped backward.
Like a boneless sack of rotting meat, he spun half a circle in place, letting out a muffled, incoherent groan.
Cole stood where he was, looking completely innocent.
He had good intentions; it was just an unfortunate accident.
He was just unlucky—what could he do?
Even the system had forgiven him.
Weren’t the boss and his wife going to show a little forgiveness too?
“Gary!
You little brute!”
Clearly, the owner’s wife had zero intention of forgiving him.
She lunged forward with a shriek.
Her tight dress squeezed her so hard she looked like a blood sausage launched from a slingshot.
Her razor-sharp acrylic nails, sharp enough to use as bottle openers, shot straight for Cole’s face.
The four red welts on her left cheek hadn’t faded yet, making her grimace look particularly hideous.
Cole put on a near-tearful expression, scrambling backward in a panic.
“Ma’am, don’t get so worked up!
Let’s talk this out, don’t throw hands!
Your nails are so long—if you scratch up my face, can you even afford to pay for it?!”
His back “accidentally” bumped against the nearby storage rack.
The rack was already unstable.
Shaken by the impact, the neatly stacked flour bags wobbled a couple of times before dropping vertically from two meters up.
Poof.
The bag of flour exploded directly on top of the woman’s head.
For a brief moment, the kitchen looked as if a white smoke grenade had detonated.
She was covered in pure snow-white, flour clinging even to her eyelashes like a freshly excavated terracotta warrior.
She opened her mouth to curse, only to inhale a massive gulp of flour.
Gagging, her old face turned bright red as she coughed violently.
Against the white powder, the four red finger marks on her cheek stood out even more vividly, like fingernail scratches in the snow.
By now, Gary had finally recovered.
His face was a sticky mess of flour and dried nosebleed, splotchy white and red like a clown whose makeup job had been interrupted midway.
Roaring like a wounded boar with a spear up its rear, he lowered his head and charged at Cole.
Cole glanced down at the floor, then at the dough near his feet.
It was the dough he had been mid-way through kneading—perfectly elastic, smooth surface, a genuinely good piece of dough.
Such a waste.
He squatted down to pick up the dough.
His timing was immaculate.
As Gary rushed over, his foot caught against Cole’s strategically stuck-out ankle.
The sheer momentum couldn’t be stopped.
Gary practically took flight, tracing a clumsy arc through the air before plummeting headfirst with a loud thud straight into the oversized trash can in the corner.
The trash can shuddered violently, unable to handle the sudden weight, and tipped over onto the floor.
Gary’s two fat legs stuck out from the bin, kicking helplessly in the air.
As he fell in, his trousers snagged on the rim, pulling down enough to reveal half his dusty waistband.
Cole looked away.
He was going to get sties in his eyes—it was far too agonizing to watch.
Gary thrashed in the garbage bin, coated in rotten vegetable leaves and coffee grounds.
His voice came out muffled from inside the bin, sounding like he was shouting from under a coffin lid.
“Get out!
You jinx!
Get the hell out of my shop right now!”
For once, Cole didn’t waste any breath arguing.
He didn’t want to spend another second in this dump.
The stench of stale garlic, cheap perfume, and burnt flour formed a chemical weapon in his nostrils—one he’d willingly trade to hang upside down from the roof of Wayne Tower by a strand of webbing in the freezing night wind just to escape.
He turned and walked out of the kitchen.
Passing the cash register, Cole paused and pulled open the drawer.
Inside lay a scattering of crumpled banknotes with curled edges, looking like they had been handled dozens of times.
With an expressionless face, Cole pulled out a single twenty-dollar bill, folded it carefully, and slipped it into his pocket.
That was his pay for the day. New chapters come out on g.com first.
He didn’t take a single cent extra.
He had kneaded dough for three days, ten hours a day.
He earned this money fair and square.
He walked out of the bakery.
Gotham during the daytime was as dismal as ever.
The sky was a gloomy gray, sunlight filtering through heavy clouds into a filthy pale yellow, like overnight tea spilled onto an old bedsheet.
The air carried that permanent, unwashable tang of rust and the dank stench of sewage backing up from the drains.
He was used to it.
So used to it that whenever he caught a whiff of fresh bread, he’d think it was an hallucination.
Tucking his battered backpack under his arm, he walked toward the corner with his head down.
Curses ran through his mind with every step.
He hadn’t put on a mask or covered his face when he went out today.
Under normal circumstances, by the time his shift ended, it would be time for Spider-Man to clock in—a seamless transition.
He had just wanted to do a simple shift, knead some dough, bake a baguette…
Who could have predicted he’d end up starring in an action movie?
…Sigh, he should have known.
He needed to find an empty alley fast to change into his gear.
He felt unusually irritable today, perfect for finding a few punks to blow off steam on…
Ah, wait!
No!
Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was in top form today, perfect for having a friendly chat with troubled youths before they slipped deeper into the dark side!
The sooner, the better.
Cole stroked his devastatingly handsome face as he turned into a secluded, narrow alley.
The good news: he ran into thugs.
In Gotham, running into thugs was more natural than breathing, making it the perfect opportunity to vent after changing.
The bad news: he hadn’t had time to change yet.
Even worse: those three thugs weren’t entirely straight.
He hated LJPG…
Lpjg…
Whatever, he forgot the acronym.
Anyway, Cole’s ideal world was one where men liked women and women liked men.
…Wait, scratch that!
It was a world where men liked women and women liked men!
He just wished everyone’s sexual orientation was normal—like choosing male or female when selecting gender, without options like Male, Female, Other, or Custom.
Deep in the alley, three young men with cigarettes dangling from their lips leaned against the wall.
Their predatory eyes roamed maliciously over Cole, sliding from his face down to his neck, from his neck to his waist, and finally lingering on the beat-up backpack in his hand.
Cole knew that look all too well.
It wasn’t an “I’m going to rob your money” look—it was…
fucking disgusting.
The leader spat his cigarette butt onto the ground and crushed it ruthlessly with the toe of his shoe.
A faded mermaid tattoo stretched across his arm, its tail warped by his bulging muscle so it resembled a dissected catfish.
“Well, well, look at that face,” he sneered, his grin giving Cole the sensation of a slimy slug slithering down the back of his neck.
“Softer than a cream cake in a bakery window.
You new here, kid?
Whose territory are you from?
Haven’t seen you around East End.
Do you like eating cream puffs?”
Cole stood at the mouth of the alley holding his worn-out backpack, looking down at himself.
Cheap work clothes, still sprinkled with flour dust he hadn’t dusted off.
The sleeves were a bit short, exposing thin wrists with wrist bones jutting out like underdeveloped walnuts.
Add to that a face that, in the eyes of Gotham criminals, was practically labeled “Free Sample.”
He sighed.
He really should have checked his horoscope before leaving the house today.
If these were three older women, maybe he really would have been led astray.
What if?