The attic was quiet, save for the soft clanking of Bruce’s teeth against the rim of his bowl as he munched on dog food.
bound in spider-silk, the puppy took a few bites, looked up at Cole, and rustled his tail softly against the cardboard box.
Cole Vance sat on the floor, leaning against the tattered sofa in the dark.
A sliver of orange streetlight filtered through the window, illuminating the crumpled pile of cash spread out before him.
He smoothed out the bills one by one and arranged them by denomination, his movements slow and deliberate, as if counting treasured items he couldn’t bear to use.
“This twenty is for titanium plating.” He placed a twenty-dollar bill on the left.
“This one’s for ballistic nylon.” Another bill went to the left.
“This one’s for the sewing machine.
And this one is for your dog food.” He pointed at Bruce lying in the cardboard box.
Hearing the word “food,” the puppy’s ears twitched, and his tail wagged even faster.
“This is for your anti-inflammatories.
This one’s for your gauze.” Two more bills joined the growing stack on the left.
“This one’s for bedsheets.
This one’s for the duvet cover.
This one’s for the shirt on my back.
And this one’s for frozen chicken breasts.”
He laid out the last few bills, then looked down at the pile on the right.
Only a few lonely bills remained on the right side, so thin they looked like the last few leaves clinging to a branch in the autumn wind.
“One thousand four hundred and eighty-two,” he muttered, gathering the right-hand stack and weighing it in his palm.
Bruce Wayne’s single meal probably cost more than this whole pile.
The puppy tilted his head, letting out a faint whimper—as if he understood, or perhaps was just annoyed that Cole was counting money so slowly instead of feeding him.
“Pickier than ever, aren’t you?”
Cole looked down at him.
“Do you know that bag of puppy food cost me fifteen bucks?
The ration bars I eat cost ten for a whole box!
You eat better than me, sleep warmer than me, and when your leg broke, someone actually put medicine on it.
I cracked my ribs and had to slap on iodine myself.
Tell me, who looks more like the stray here?”
Bruce rested his chin on the edge of the cardboard box.
Honestly, weren’t both of them strays?
Heck, Cole was technically still protected by minor welfare laws.
Cole rolled up the remaining cash and shoved it into a crack in the sofa.
The movement pulled at his ribs.
He winced, gripping the sofa to catch his breath for a few seconds.
His mind was still replaying last night’s battle.
The whistle of that tail tearing through the air sounded like an iron bar striking a clothesline.
The dull ache that reverberated up to his shoulder when his fist slammed into Killer Croc’s chest.
The tear along the suit’s shoulder—the deformed titanium plate, the frayed nylon, the burst stitches blooming like tiny fireworks.
It had to be mended, which meant spending more money.
How on earth did Batman, a non-mutated normal human, trade blows back and forth with a creature like that?
Peter Parker’s cognitive capacity was breaking down every frame of the fight into raw data: Killer Croc’s wingspan, the subtle twitch in his shoulders before an attack, the habit of planting his foot at a specific angle before a tail sweep.
Data streamed through his mind like an unclosable faucet.
Cole shook his head, trying to flush out the data overflow.
It was useless.
The learning capacity wasn’t something he could just turn off; once granted, it ran continuously.
This was Cole’s newly acquired system reward—Peter Parker’s brain, granting [Intellect +10086].
Did he note this down in his diary when he got it?
He couldn’t quite remember.
Having never scored above passing in high school math, Cole hadn’t completely adjusted to this genius mindset.
Then again, if he hadn’t been so unbalanced in his studies, why would he have studied art?
Pure passion?
“Fine then,” Cole said to the empty room.
The system didn’t respond, though Bruce whimpered twice in reply.
Peter Parker’s genius: handcrafting web-shooters, formulating custom chemical formulas, making Tony Stark question his life choices before even graduating high school.
Impressive.
He had to respect it.
As a former art student, his head was now packed with crocodilian skeletal structures and muscle mechanics, dissecting Killer Croc’s bite force data even in his sleep.
Cole tried to stand up, but stopped halfway.
The bruising on his ribs was shifting from purple to yellow—the spider genes were healing him, but healing didn’t mean pain-free.
The puppy squirmed inside his shirt, settled into a comfortable spot, and poked out the tip of his nose.
“Be quiet,” Cole patted the pup through the fabric.
“I’m taking you out to see the world.
In Gotham, a dog that hasn’t been to the library doesn’t deserve to be named Bruce.”
“Yip!”
Cole changed into a white shirt he had scavenged from a flea market.
It was faded and frayed at the collar, but clean.
In Gotham, clean clothes were a ticket into civilized society.
The way a librarian looked at a homeless person versus a regular citizen was like looking at two entirely different species.
Pretty much the difference between looking at a goblin and a human.
When a group’s appearance, behavior, and lifespan were on an entirely different level from yours, it was hard to view them as your own kind.
Cole examined himself in a barely reflective shard of mirror.
He was handsome and slender, with a small face that made him look even younger than his actual age.
Although well-defined muscles were hidden beneath his clothes, Cole was lean enough to look thin in casual wear.
Wearing this shirt, he looked like a destitute student queueing for charity meals at a church school.
Great.
The less he looked like Spider-Man, the safer he was.
…
Diamond District.
Gotham Public Library.
Massive stone pillars supported the domed ceiling, and the air was thick with the dry scent of old paper and aged wood.
Cole stood at the entrance for a few seconds, looking up at the heavy oak doors.
He used to think libraries were always free.
Now he knew that in a place like Gotham, without Wayne Enterprises pouring money into it, they would actually charge admission.
Isn’t this place supposed to be public?
Cole pushed the doors open and walked in.
The reading room was vast, with bookshelves stretching from floor to ceiling and rolling ladders mounted on tracks.
The aisles between shelves were so narrow that people had to squeeze past sideways.
Sunlight streamed down from high arched windows, slicing through the air in dusty beams of light.
Locating the biology section, Cole scanned the labels above before pulling down an atlas heavy enough to double as a dumbbell: *Anatomical Atlas of Reptiles*.
Opening the title page, he saw a line of small print: *Funded by the Wayne Enterprises Special Grant.*
Cole stared at the line for a moment.
Bruce squirmed inside his shirt, and Cole quickly patted him down.
“Quiet.
We don’t have library cards, so technically this is freeloading.
Your dad is an undocumented resident, and an undocumented resident’s dog is also undocumented.
Undocumented residents can’t get cards.”
The puppy seemed to understand—or perhaps ignored him entirely—simply burrowing his snout deeper into Cole’s palm.
Cole sat down in a corner spot near the window and opened the book.
From the masseter muscle structure of crocodilians to the thickness of their temporal bones, he flipped through page by page.
Peter Parker’s cognitive faculty kicked into gear.
Complex vascular distributions, skeletal anatomy, and muscular orientations ceased to be dry Latin terminology.
They morphed into living architectural blueprints, automatically assembling into a 3D model inside his head.
*Temporal region, sides of the cranium, temporal muscle attachment points.*
*Relatively thin bone structure.
A solid impact here could instantly overload the central nervous system.*
*Foramen magnum, the pathway where the spinal cord enters the cranial cavity.*
*If he wrapped web-lines around Killer Croc’s neck and used gravity to yank backward violently…
Wait, no.
His current webbing tensile strength isn’t enough.
It can currently hold his body weight plus a modest extra load, but a forced strain against Croc would snap it.*
*Change of plan.*
*Temporomandibular joint: extreme vertical bite force, but weak lateral resistance.*
*Snare the upper jaw with webbing—don’t pull straight back, yank laterally.
Dislocating the joint will shatter the combat instincts of any creature.*
Cole pulled another volume from the shelf, *Metabolic Studies of Mutated Organisms*, flipping to the chapter on scaly armor structures.
*Killer Croc’s dorsal hide is too thick; direct frontal strikes are highly inefficient, but the abdomen is relatively vulnerable.*
*Force him upright, then strike his lower body. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Or knock him down and target the joints.*
The librarian was an elderly woman wearing reading glasses.
She observed the teenager sitting in the corner from over her lenses.
He had been reading continuously for four hours—no water, no sound, flipping pages at the speed of shuffling playing cards.
Partway through, he had pulled a ration bar from his pocket, washed it down with a cup of free tap water from the cooler, and quietly finished his meal.
The old lady shook her head and looked away.
In Gotham, there were many poor kids trying to change their fate through self-study, but most eventually realized what little they learned was utterly useless, quitting halfway through.
And most likely, these children wouldn’t live past forty, just like their parents.
At least this one looked neat and clean, unlike the addicts on the streets.
She hesitated for a second before deciding not to interrupt him.
By the time Cole closed the last book, night was falling outside.
He stood up and returned every book to its precise location, his movements as fluid and efficient as spinning silk.
*Take notes, citizens of Gotham.
This is called manners and civic decency.*
Bruce finally couldn’t help letting out a tiny squeak, as light as a cat’s hiccup.
Cole quickly muzzled the pup with his hand and hurried out the front doors.
Back at the attic.
Using the orange streetlight streaming through the window, Cole knelt on the floor and drew a diagram of the Docks area with chalk.
Container yards, gantry cranes, abandoned warehouses—every exit marked firmly with arrows.
He designated himself as a blue dot and Killer Croc as a red square.
“Set a tension anchor here.”
He drew an arc on the floor, sliding his finger along it to the side.
“Use the crane counterweights to shift the angle of a tipping shipping container.
His tail is too long, which means it’ll get jammed in tight alleys.
If I lure him between container gaps and pin his tail, half the battle is won.”
He tossed the chalk onto the floor.
This wasn’t just a brawl; it was physics.
Spider-Man’s brain was transforming the Docks into an applied mechanics exam question.
Cole sank onto the sofa, pulled the sewing machine closer, and began mending the tear on his suit’s shoulder.
The stitches were jagged and crooked, resembling a crawling centipede.
He looked up and saw a dark silhouette gliding past the bell tower in the distance.
A cape unfurled in the night wind like a giant, silent bat, sweeping off toward the docks.
“Oh right, this city has a certified vigilante.”
Cole lowered his head, adjusting the spool on the sewing machine.
“Maybe I should leave the giant lizard to Batman?
He’s got armored vehicles, grappling guns, and a load of high-tech gear I could never afford.
What’s a broke guy like me, sewing his own costume, meddling for?
Every hero beats their own rogues’ gallery.
I’ll step up when a real Lizard shows up…”
A system chime sounded in his mind.
“I was joking!” Cole said to the air.
“System, why don’t you have a shred of sense of humor?”
He looked down at the repaired suit in his hands.
The jagged seam sat lumpily on the shoulder, lopsided and uneven, standing out awkwardly against the intact side.
“…”
*Then again, the stitches on the other side weren’t exactly clean either.*
“If I don’t beat that big crocodile up myself, I won’t do justice to my three hundred and sixty dollars, let alone the six hours spent reading three stupid books at the library—and especially not this centipede-looking stitch job.”
He gently moved Bruce into the padded cardboard box.
The puppy yawned, turned over, and drifted back to sleep, his tail twitching faintly and slapping the cardboard wall with a soft thump.
“Guard the house.”
Cole pulled on his suit.
Before donning his cowl, he glanced back down at the box.
The spider-silk bound around the fractured leg was beginning to loosen; the webbing degraded over time, so it needed replacing.
He knelt down and spun a fresh wrap of silk around it, his hands much more adept than before.
Finishing up, he gently flicked the tip of the puppy’s ear.
“I’ll change it again when I get back.
Don’t go squirming.”
Cole pulled on his mask, pushed open the metal grate of the vent, and leaped into the Gotham night.