In the back kitchen, Leon slammed the half-kneaded dough onto the cutting board.
Boss Gary stood to his right, his fat belly pressed firmly against Leon’s shoulder.
Even through his faded work clothes, the clammy warmth of that massive lump of fat was unmistakable.
The proprietress stood to his left, her red-nailed finger hooked under the strap of his apron.
Her heavily painted lips split open to reveal a glinting gold tooth.
Leon casually raised his left hand.
He backhanded the proprietress straight across the face.
The movement wasn’t sweeping, but the snap of his wrist packed serious power.
His knuckles perfectly connected with her powdered cheekbone.
The sound was sharp, like snapping a fresh carrot in half.
The proprietress staggered two steps sideways, her cheap heels screeching against the grease-stained tiles.
Her back slammed into the storage rack, causing a twenty-pound bag of flour to wobble dangerously.
Four distinct red welts flared across her cheek, and a chunk of lipstick that had been smeared onto her gold tooth was knocked clean off.
Before Gary could even register what was happening, Leon’s right hand struck.
Another backhand, exactly the same wrist torque.
Gary’s face carried considerably more fat than his wife’s, so the sound was duller—like slapping a sack of over-proofed dough.
His head jerked violently to the right, his triple chin wobbling with the impact.
He stumbled backward, his lower back slamming into the hot edge of the industrial oven.
He let out a sharp yelp as the metal seared him.
The kitchen went dead silent for exactly half a second.
Inside Leon’s head, the system’s alarm shrieked like a boiling kettle.
I know starting a fight wasn’t right, but if I didn’t hit them, I really wouldn’t be able to live with myself, okay?
Leon mentally argued with the system.
The proprietress recovered first.
She clutched her face, tears of genuine pain welling in her heavily lined eyes.
Her mouth stretched into a gaping, irregular oval.
“You—you hit me? You hit me!”
Her voice was as shrill as a fork scraping across a baking tray.
It was annoying as hell.
But thanks to her screaming, the system’s warning alarm finally shut off.
Boss Gary’s reaction took a beat longer, but it was far more direct.
He looked down at his flour-covered apron, then back up at Leon.
The expression on his face morphed from total bewilderment to sheer, murderous rage—like a fat pig finally realizing it had just been kicked.
He clenched his meaty fists, the thick black hairs on his knuckles standing up.
With his heightened reflexes, Leon actually had time to count exactly how many hairs there were.
Through the lens of his Spider-Sense, that sweaty, fat fist was moving with the speed of a starving snail.
He even had time to mentally draft an insult: You run a bakery; shouldn’t your hands be covered in flour?
Why are they covered in motor oil?
Do you seriously not do a single lick of work around here?
How does this dump even stay open when the food tastes this bad?
Leon casually stepped to the side.
The movement was minimal, just a slight lean—exactly enough to let that heavy, sweating fist sail right past his ear.
Thud.
Gary’s fist slammed directly into the solid sheet metal of the oven with a loud, hollow bang.
The oven door popped open a fraction, releasing a blast of intense heat.
Inside, the row of baguettes immediately began to deflate.
“Awoo—!”
Gary’s scream pierced the flour-dusted air, sounding exactly like a groundhog that had just had its tail stepped on.
The system’s alarm began to spool up again.
Leon immediately slapped on a mask of pure terror, waving his hands wildly in the air.
“Oh my god, Boss! Are you okay? Why did you punch the oven? It’s innocent! It bakes bread for you every day; didn’t it hurt hitting it that hard?”
As he spoke, Leon dramatically “stumbled,” his center of gravity shifting forward with perfectly calculated clumsiness.
He brought his elbow up, precisely catching Gary square on the chin.
The system’s alarm went silent.
He had a legitimate excuse.
It was an accident. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Crack.
That was the sickening sound of teeth violently colliding.
It made a person’s jaw ache just listening to it—like two pieces of cheap porcelain being slammed together.
Gary’s head snapped back.
He collapsed like a sack of boneless, rotting meat, spinning a half-circle before hitting the floor and letting out an unintelligible whimper.
Leon stood there, looking the picture of innocence.
He had good intentions; he just accidentally tripped and messed things up.
If his luck was bad, what could he do?
Even the system had forgiven him.
So surely the boss and his wife were planning on forgiving him too?
“Gary! You little beast!”
The proprietress clearly had no intention of forgiving him.
She screamed like a banshee and lunged forward.
Her tight dress constricted her movement, making her look like a sausage being fired from a slingshot.
Her long, acrylic nails—sharp enough to pop a bottle cap—were aimed straight for Leon’s eyes.
The four red welts on her left cheek were glowing brightly now, making her look particularly demonic.
Leon plastered a tearful expression on his face, scrambling backward in a mock panic.
“Ma’am, don’t get excited! Let’s talk this out, no need to fight! Your nails are so long—if you scratch my face, do you have any idea how much the medical bills will cost you?”
His back “accidentally” slammed hard into the nearby storage rack.
The metal rack was already wobbly.
The impact shook the precarious stacks of flour, causing a heavy twenty-pound bag to teeter twice before plummeting straight down.
Pfft.
The bag scored a direct hit on the proprietress’s head, bursting open on impact.
Instantly, the back kitchen looked like a white phosphorus grenade had detonated.
The proprietress was dyed completely snow-white.
With her eyelashes caked in powder, she looked exactly like a freshly unearthed terracotta statue.
She opened her mouth to scream, inhaled a massive cloud of flour instead, and began hacking and coughing violently, her face turning bright red beneath the white powder.
The four red welts on her cheek were now perfectly highlighted by the flour, looking like four claw marks scratched into fresh snow.
Boss Gary finally regained his senses.
His face was smeared with a mixture of raw flour and a steady nosebleed—white in some spots, bright red in others.
He looked like an enraged Joker who had quit halfway through putting on his makeup.
He let out a guttural roar, lowered his head, and charged blindly at Leon like a wild boar.
Leon looked down at the floor, noting the lump of raw dough that had fallen by his feet earlier.
It was the dough he had been kneading; the gluten structure was perfect, the surface smooth.
It was a damn good piece of dough.
What a waste.
He crouched down to pick it up.
The timing was immaculate.
As Gary charged like a runaway freight train, his leading foot snagged perfectly on Leon’s extended ankle.
With all that forward momentum, there was no stopping it.
Gary took flight, tracing a clumsy, heavy arc through the air before landing headfirst with a massive crash directly into the oversized garbage can in the corner.
The heavy plastic can wobbled violently under the sudden weight before tipping over onto its side.
Gary’s two fat legs stuck straight out of the opening, kicking helplessly in the air.
His pants had caught on the rim of the can as he went in, pulling them down to reveal half of his grayish, stained underwear.
Leon quickly averted his eyes.
He was going to get an eye infection just looking at that.
Gary thrashed inside the trash can, covering himself in rotting vegetable peels and wet coffee grounds.
His voice echoed from inside the plastic barrel, muffled as if he were shouting through a coffin lid.
“Get out! You little jinx! Get out of my shop right now!”
For once, Leon didn’t bother with a witty comeback.
He didn’t want to spend another second in this dump anyway.
The combined smell of day-old garlic, cheap perfume, and scorched flour was creating a chemical weapon in his sinuses.
He would gladly hang upside down from Wayne Tower in the freezing wind all night just to get this stench out of his nose.
He turned and casually walked out of the kitchen.
Passing the front counter, Leon paused and pulled open the cash register.
A few scattered bills lay inside, crumpled and curled at the edges as if they had been repeatedly wrung out.
That was his agreed-upon pay for the day.
He didn’t take a penny more.
He had spent three days kneading dough and standing for ten hours straight; he was taking this twenty bucks with a clear conscience.
He walked out of the bakery and onto the street.
Gotham in the daylight was just as pathetic as it was at night.
The sky was a hazy gray, and the weak sunlight filtering through the smog looked dirty and pale—like old tea spilled on a yellowed bedsheet.
The air carried the permanent, lingering smell of rust and raw sewage.
He was already used to it.
He was so used to it that whenever he actually smelled fresh, clean air, he assumed he was hallucinating.
He hoisted his tattered backpack over his shoulder and walked toward the street corner, head down.
He muttered curses under his breath the entire way.
He hadn’t brought his mask or suit with him today.
Usually, by the time his shift ended, he would seamlessly transition into his friendly neighborhood patrol route.
He had just planned to come in, knead some dough, and bake some bread.
Who would have thought he’d have to put on a full-contact martial arts demonstration on the side?
Sigh.
He should have expected this.
It was Gotham.
He needed to quickly find an empty alley to change into his suit.
He was feeling pretty irritable today, which meant it was the perfect time to find some thugs to beat up…
Wait, no.
It meant today was the perfect day for his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to have a positive, constructive chat with some misunderstood youths who had fallen into the criminal underworld.
The sooner the better.
Leon rubbed his devastatingly handsome face as he turned into a narrow, secluded alleyway between two brick buildings.
The good news was, he instantly ran into thugs.
Running into criminals in Gotham was more natural than breathing.
It was perfect; he could vent his frustration as soon as he put the suit on.
The bad news was, he hadn’t had time to put the suit on yet.
The worse news was, these three thugs weren’t looking at him like a target for a mugging.
He hated the whole alphabet mafia thing—LGBTQ…
whatever the acronym was.
Honestly, the kind of world Leon wanted to live in was simple: men liking women, and women liking men.
He just wished everyone in this universe had standard preferences.
It was like character creation in a video game—you just pick male or female.
You shouldn’t have to navigate through male, female, other, or custom settings.
Deep in the alley, three scruffy young men with cheap cigarettes dangling from their lips were leaning against the damp brick wall.
Their eyes crawled over Leon with sickening intent, sliding from his face to his neck, down to his waist, and finally resting on the cheap, tattered backpack slung over his shoulder.
Leon was all too familiar with that specific look.
It wasn’t the ‘I’m going to take your wallet’ look.
It was the ‘I’m going to take you to a second location’ look.
It was absolutely disgusting.
The leader of the group spat his cigarette butt onto the wet pavement and ground it out fiercely with the heel of his boot.
He had a faded, poorly inked mermaid tattooed on his forearm.
The way his muscles bulged made the fish tail look distorted, like a catfish being violently dissected.
“Yo, check out this face,” the leader laughed.
The sound of his laugh made Leon feel like a slimy slug was crawling down the back of his neck.
“Tenderer than those cream cakes in the bakery window. You new here, kid? Who do you belong to? Ain’t seen you around the East End before. You like cream puffs?”
Leon stood at the mouth of the alley, clutching his worn backpack, and looked down at his own outfit.
He was wearing cheap, oversized work clothes, still dusted with the white flour he hadn’t bothered to brush off.
The sleeves were slightly too short, revealing his thin wrists.
The bones protruded sharply, making him look malnourished and frail.
Combine that with his young, clean face, and in the eyes of Gotham’s lowest scum, he basically had a neon sign over his head blinking, “Free Samples.”
Leon sighed heavily.
He really should have checked his horoscope before leaving the house today.
If it had been three beautiful women cornering him in an alley, he might have actually let himself go astray.
What a waste.