*Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!*
Tongues of flame spewed from a heavy machine gun inside the dark dock warehouse.
Bullets struck the rusted shipping container with a din like a hundred maniacs hammering on an iron door all at once.
Cole Vance curled tightly in the shadow behind the container, clamping his hands over his ears, his face squeezed into a grimace beneath his mask.
At this caliber, even a grazing shot would turn his freshly sewn, cheap pajama suit into shredded ribbons—and take a few pounds of his flesh along with it.
“Bro!
Your firepower is way too intense!
I’m just wearing pajamas!
*Pajamas!*”
Cole yelled at the top of his lungs, his voice sounding utterly pathetic amidst the dense gunfire.
“You’re using armor-piercing anti-vehicle rounds on me!
Do you think this is fair?
It completely violates sportsmanship!
Has the entry barrier for Gotham’s underworld dropped this low?
You don’t even observe basic dueling etiquette anymore?”
The response was another frantic, sweeping burst of lead.
A shard of sheet metal sheared off by a ricochet flew through the air, striking Cole’s mask with a sharp *clang* before bouncing away.
Cole ducked his head, feeling the faint vibration rattle his skull.
“Fine, negotiations have broken down.
I knew it.
You guys who look like potatoes crushed in a door never watch the sports channel.”
He silently counted the rhythm of the gunfire in his head.
Scarface, that idiot, was clearly seeing red, his ammo belt dragging across the concrete floor with a harsh metallic screech.
Cole moved.
He did not roll out into a dashing hero’s counterattack like in the movies.
Instead, he opted for an extremely undignified, almost comical scramble.
Hunched over with his rear in the air, his feet hopped as if dancing across a red-hot griddle as he scurried frantically between the gaps of the shipping containers.
Several times, he nearly tripped over discarded steel pipes on the ground, wobbling like a drunken penguin.
Cole swore to heaven that if he had health insurance, he would love nothing more than to pull off a supremely stylish entrance.
But he had no insurance and zero money, so looking cool had to take a backseat.
Whatever maximized his chances of not getting hurt was the way to go.
“Slow down!
Slow down!
My shoelace came undone!
Wait for me to tie it!”
Bullets chased his heels, kicking up a trail of blinding sparks along the ground.
Cole squawked as he ran, shouting over his shoulder without looking back, “Psyche!
These beat-up sneakers don’t even have laces!”
Scarface laughed maniacally, the heavy machine gun in his hands acting like the Grim Reaper’s scythe, wildly mowing down everything in sight.
Cole ducked into a blind spot, his eyes locked onto the space above.
There hung an old overhead cargo crane.
Like an old man with one foot in the grave, its rust-eaten boom groaned and creaked in the sea breeze.
A thick steel cable held a massive main hook, swaying slightly in midair.
The cable’s corrosion visually exceeded thirty-two percent.
Most importantly, the lubricant on the load-bearing axle had dried up long ago.
If the force shifted even slightly off-center, the entire pulley assembly was a dud shell waiting to blow.
All he needed was the right angle.
Cole burst from his cover, sprinting directly toward the spot beneath the hook.
He ran at blazing speed, but as he passed an oil drum, his foot made a bizarre “slip.”
His body pitched forward violently, making him look like a pitiful wretch whose stamina had completely given out.
Sure enough, Scarface stopped in his tracks, a cruel grin spreading across his fleshy, scarred face.
He raised his gun, steadily aiming the barrel at the back of the head of this lunatic who called himself Spider-Man.
Cole didn’t look back.
Real men never look at explosions!
*Now!*
Cole threw his arm back and shot a line of webbing.
That glob of white, viscous fluid with the texture of expired noodles—*dammit, it’s just spider silk, can the universe stop flagging me for low-tier NSFW?!*—stuck with pinpoint accuracy to the locking clasp of the crane hook above.
Cole yanked hard.
Using the tension, he launched himself from the ground, swinging up into the air like an oversized yo-yo.
*Rat-tat-tat-tat!*
Scarface’s aim reflexively tracked Cole’s silhouette upward.
Sparks flew.
Several heavy-caliber rounds slammed hard into the already strained cable.
Under the violent impact of the machine gun fire, the heavily corroded steel cable gave a final, desperate snap.
The sound was as crisp as a broken violin string.
The two-ton hunk of iron lost its restraint instantly, plummeting from on high with an ear-piercing howl.
“Watch out—!”
Cole let out a shrill scream in midair, sounding genuinely concerned for the man below.
At the exact same moment, the tip of his foot tapped a nearby crossbeam.
The angle of this kick was extremely tricky.
Under the subtle resultant force of that light tap, the falling trajectory of the plummeting hook shifted by a fraction of an inch.
Scarface froze.
He instinctively looked up, the massive dark shadow rapidly expanding in his pupils, blotting out all the light leaking through the warehouse roof.
*Boom!*
An earth-shattering crash shook the warehouse.
The hook slammed into the concrete floor less than half a meter in front of Scarface.
The hard ground shattered like tofu, sending countless concrete fragments flying outward like shrapnel.
The massive shockwave instantly blew Scarface off his feet.
His body flipped through the air without a shred of dignity, his back crashing hard against the warehouse’s iron door.
*Clang!*
A massive dent formed in the metal.
Scarface slid down like an empty burlap sack, his heavy machine gun clattering far away as he lay completely motionless.
Cole landed on the ground with a soft *thud*.
He didn’t strike any cool landing pose.
Instead, he dropped into a deep squat, gasping for breath in heavy, ragged heaves.
His shoulders heaved violently as he rested his hands on his knees, trembling all over like a phone set to vibrate.
Holy crap, that was close…”
Muttering under his breath, he scrambled over to Scarface on all fours and shakily extended a finger under the mobster’s fleshy nose.
Still breathing.
Cole let out a long sigh of relief and collapsed onto his rear on the dusty floor.
“Still alive…
Thank God, thank physics, and thank the Gotham municipal maintenance department for slacking off on the job.”
He patted his chest and spoke earnestly to the unconscious thug:
“Bro, remember to file a complaint when you get back.
The safety hazards on that crane are way too severe.
Seriously, if I hadn’t yelled just now, you’d be a flat meat patty glued to the concrete.
Don’t thank me, I’m just your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.”
Meanwhile, in the darkest corner of the warehouse rafters.
A dark figure stood as still as a stone statue.
Through his tactical visor, Bruce Wayne replayed everything that had just happened frame by frame.
He saw it.
He saw the seemingly clumsy yet insanely precise kick the youth had delivered in midair.
It was a feat of pinpoint precision born of absolute mastery over mechanics, angles, and gravitational acceleration.
Yet he saw the rest as well.
He saw the youth immediately rush over upon landing to check if his enemy was dead or alive.
He saw the heartfelt, almost faint relief when the kid confirmed the man was still breathing.
He saw him sitting on the ground, shivering and muttering to himself without a shred of dignity.
Batman remained silent.
Streams of data cascaded rapidly across his white tactical lenses.
Was this kid putting on an act, or was he truly…
as pure as a blank sheet of paper?
Pure as a blank sheet of paper in Gotham?
Was that even possible?
Naturally suspicious, Batman temporarily filed the question under “Pending Observation.” But before he could make a decision, piercing police sirens wailed outside the docks.
Along with the sirens came the heavy roar of numerous high-powered motorcycles.
The Maroni family’s reinforcements had arrived.
The mob’s reaction time was always a step ahead of the GCPD.
Cole was about to stand when he suddenly felt a chill at his back.
A heavy, suffocating pressure, as if the entire night sky were collapsing upon him.
*Peter Tingle, could you chime in, please?*
Even his ordinary sixth sense could tell there was a giant bat behind him now.
*Peter Tingle, are you seriously not going to go off?*
Cole grumbled internally while silently making a wish for the next spider-ability he could obtain from the system.
*Spider-Sense, I’m begging you.*
To show his sincerity, he was willing to go two weeks without cursing the system in his daily letters.
A shadow dropped from above.
A cape billowed in the air, looking like a tailored piece of the night sky itself.
The landing was so light it didn’t even stir the dust on the floor.
Cole let out a startled yelp and leapt into the air, springing onto the opposite wall and clinging to it with all four limbs.
Batman’s control over his presence was too perfect—so perfect that Cole’s senses had only picked up the cue a second before he touched down.
“You’re—you’re that—that Big Bat!”