Night in Gotham always carried a breeze laced with the stench of rotting salted fish and cheap gasoline.
That was port cities for you.
Smelled awful.
Cole Vance crouched atop a rust-streaked crane at the South Docks, tugging upward on the mask he had cut out of an old T-shirt.
The breathability was terrible; every exhale fogged his entire face with hot air.
He’d have to find a way to cut breathing holes into it later, but not too big, or his identity would be blown.
Quite a dilemma.
Being poor sucked.
Other unfortunate variants of Spider-Man at least weren’t undocumented immigrants.
At least they had Aunt May.
Could Bruce Wayne legally change his name to May?
Cole had been longing for a relative for a while now.
Not for the Wayne Enterprises fortune.
Absolutely not.
Cole stared down at the edge of the pier.
Several homeless people were hog-tied and stacked behind a shipping container like discount turkeys at a supermarket.
A circle of men in black suits stood around them.
The man in charge, sporting a jagged scar running from his brow straight down to his jaw, was directing his crew to dump the captives into the ocean.
One of the vagrants—gray-haired, scrawny as kindling, with small bugs visibly falling off his clothes—didn’t even struggle when he was hoisted up.
It was as if he was already resigned to being disposed of like garbage.
Cole counted them in his head.
Six gunmen, one squad leader.
Two submachine guns, four handguns.
A firepower setup classified under: “More than enough to turn a pajama-wearing high schooler into Swiss cheese twice over.”
Still not quite enough to take down Spider-Man, though.
Taking a deep breath, Cole leaped from the crane.
Mid-fall, he raised his wrist and fired a line of webbing.
The strand traced a wobbly arc through the air, barely snagging the submachine gun held by one of the thugs.
With a sharp yank, the weapon flew from the man’s grip, clattering across the concrete before slipping into the gap between the pier and a moored vessel.
*Splash.* Sunk to the bottom.
“Hey!”
Cole landed atop a shipping container, crouching low as he waved down at them.
“Good evening!
Those things go off easily; very dangerous for kids to play with.
See?
Dropped right into the ocean.
I’m doing you a favor, honestly.
The fish down there will thank you.
They’ve been low on iron lately.”
The thugs looked up in unison.
The scarred leader slowly turned around, the scar on his face twisting like a drunken centipede under the dim dock lights.
Chatterbox, red-and-blue color scheme, definitely not Batman.
“Spider-Man?”
“In the flesh.
Your friendly neighborhood,” Cole said, standing up and patting the dust off his pajamas.
“By the way, are those suits company-issued or bought out of pocket?
If they’re company-issued, I suggest you have a word with your boss.
That cut, that tailoring…
clearly clearance-rack quality.”
The scarred man didn’t laugh.
He stared at Cole for two seconds, then tilted his chin up.
“Kill him.”
Every gun barrel snapped upward in unison.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait—”
Cole raised both hands above his head, his tone as earnest as a bank clerk offering credit card installment plans.
“Everyone, calm down.
Violence solves nothing.
Look at you guys—instead of going home to sleep in the middle of the night, you’re out here freezing in the sea breeze tossing homeless people around.
What’s the point?
Vagrants aren’t going to hurt your quarterly KPIs.
Why don’t we sit down and talk it out over a cup of coffee—”
His response was a deafening volley of gunfire.
The shrill whistle of bullets tearing through the air sent a prickle of static across the back of Cole’s skull.
Digging his toes in, he sprang into the air off the container, executing a mid-air backflip.
Bullets struck the corrugated steel, sparks flying everywhere.
“My clothes!”
Cole landed atop another container, glancing down in agony at the two fresh bullet holes in his pajamas.
“This is my only pair!
You know you can’t buy fabric like this in Gotham!
I stitched this myself out of an old pair of curtains!
Curtains!
You shot holes in my curtains!”
He twisted sideways to dodge another burst of automatic fire, shooting a web line toward an overhead crane beam and swinging out.
Wind rushed past his ears, but he didn’t stop running his mouth for a single second.
“Also, who taught you guys how to shoot?
Fired all those rounds and didn’t land a single hit.
Do bullets grow on trees?
Oh, right, you’re mobsters, so I guess ammo really is free.
Never mind, then.
But your physics teacher is probably weeping right now.
Did your gym teacher sub in for your ballistics class?”
He swung above another container, let go, landed, and dropped into a stable crouch.
All in one smooth motion.
The scarred leader raised a hand, and the gunfire ceased.
He glared at Cole, narrowing his eyes so much that his scar pinched into a jagged line.
“You talk a lot.”
“Thanks, I practice.”
Cole stood up, brushing the dirt off his knees.
“If you want to learn, I can open a class.
First lesson is free: how to maintain your speaking cadence while getting beaten up.
Core strength is essential; I recommend starting with planks.
Though, looking at you, you probably couldn’t hold a plank for ten seconds.”
The scarred man drew another weapon from his waistband.
This gun was a full size larger than the others, its barrel gleaming with a lethal metallic sheen under the lights.
Cole took one look and his brain calculated the specs automatically: anti-materiel grade.
Built for piercing armored vehicles.
If it hit him, he’d probably be turned into a red-and-blue abstract painting.
“I don’t have time for your bullshit.”
The scarred man raised the massive barrel.
Cole didn’t give him the chance to pull the trigger.
With a flick of his right wrist, he fired a web line straight at a steel drum filled with waste engine oil on the ground.
The strand wrapped around the lid, and using the momentum of his swing, Cole gave it a violent yank.
With a thunderous crash, the steel drum rolled horizontally across the pavement like a giant bowling ball, plowing straight into the cluster of armed thugs.
“Ouch—”
“Motherfucker—”
Three men were bowled over, while the rest were doused in black grease, slipping and tumbling into an tangled heap.
They ended up in various undignified postures, with the common denominator being that none of them could stand back up.
Cole dropped into the middle of the mess, seized one thug by the arm, and guided his momentum to the side.
The man’s head collided dead-center with a suspended cargo hook.
*CLANG.*
Cole winced, sucking in a breath of cold air.
Might have used a bit too much force there.
“Hey, you threw yourself into that one; not on me.
Having a hard head doesn’t mean you should test it like that.
Remember to take some calcium supplements later.”
The remaining two thugs scrambled up from the ground, exchanged a terrified glance, and bolted as fast as their legs could carry them.
They scrambled away in utter panic, one of them even losing a shoe and hopping on one foot before vanishing behind the shipping containers.
Cole watched them flee, filled with admiration.
“Man, they’re fast.
Shame they’re not running in the Olympics.
Gotham Track & Field Team, Mob Division.
We could hire them for a public service ad later on the joys of exercise.”
*BANG.*
A bullet whipped past his ear, kicking up a searing wave of air.
Scarface.
He was bracing the massive firearm, his facial scar twisted into an S-shape with pure fury.
Without a word, he pulled the trigger a second time.
*Man, a silent villain paired with a silent Bat.*
*Talk about a dark, gritty aesthetic.*
Clad in red and blue, Cole rolled hard to the side.
The bullet blew a crater into the ground, peppering his face with concrete shrapnel.
“You little brat, didn’t your parents ever teach you not to stick your nose into other people’s business?!” the scarred man roared, continuing to fire.
Cole sprang up from the ground and executed a slide to duck behind a shipping container.
The rounds slammed into the steel sheet, the deafening clatter making his ears ring.
Covering his ears, he yelled back:
“They did!
They taught me to help others!
Especially lost middle-aged men like you who’ve strayed down the path of crime!
Also, could you keep it down for a second?!
My ears are ringing!”
He scanned his surroundings.
A crowbar was lying on the ground nearby, likely dropped by one of the thugs earlier.
He scooped it up, stayed low, and rapidly flanked around the other side of the container.
Scarface was still dumping firepower into the spot where Cole had just been, completely oblivious to the fact that Cole had already circled around to his flank.
Standing upright, Cole wound up and hurled the crowbar with all his might.
The crowbar spun end-over-end through the air and jammed directly between the cogs of the crane hoisting mechanism right above Scarface’s head.
*SCREEECH.*
A horrifying sound of grinding metal tore through the air.
The gears seized, the boom’s locking mechanism failed, and the massive steel crane arm began to slide downward.
“Look up, unc!”
Scarface looked up, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
He threw himself awkwardly to the side just as the crane boom slammed into the ground, brushing past the soles of his shoes.
*BOOM!*
The concrete floor fractured into a sprawling web of cracks.
Cole was just about to rush in and secure the takedown—webbing the wrists, knee to the spine, textbook restraint—when suddenly, every hair on his body stood on end.
It wasn’t a Spider-Sense.
He hadn’t unlocked that overpowered passive yet.
This was a primal chill creeping straight up from the base of his spine, the sensation of being locked onto by something vastly larger, darker, and entirely unreasonable.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced toward the highest point of the distant Gotham Bridge.
A dark silhouette.
Standing at the very peak of the bridge tower, cape billowing violently in the night wind.
Motionless, like a stone gargoyle.
Those eyes—though far too distant to see clearly—Cole just knew were staring straight at him.
Batman.
His fellow vigilante colleague had just watched an underage kid in pajamas beat six grown men half to death on the docks, with one of them nearly crushed by a crane boom.
He would understand.
After all, he was Batman.