Let me see what kind of danger prompted our lovely neighbors to seek out that Bat instead of their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Below the clock tower was a convenience store that had already closed, its rolling shutter pulled halfway down.
The one projecting the Bat-Signal wasn’t Gordon.
There were no police cars, no sirens—only an armored truck with its back door pried open and three masked robbers stuffing bags of cash into a van.
To be honest, Leon was a bit disappointed.
It was just a bank robbery.
He thought he might run into someone like Scarecrow, Mr.
Freeze, or the Riddler.
Since arriving in Gotham, he could handle at least five petty bank robberies like this a day.
Ah, the simple and honest folk of this city.
The Bat-Signal had been lit by an old man in gas station overalls nearby.
It was a portable handheld searchlight with a homemade bat-shaped piece of black paper stuck to it.
The light shone through the paper, casting a crooked bat shadow onto the wall of the clock tower.
The old man crouched behind a trash can at the convenience store entrance, holding the DIY searchlight with an expression like he was doing the bravest and stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life.
Leon hung upside down from a lamppost above his head.
“Old man, did you make that thing yourself?”
The old man jumped, nearly dropping the searchlight.
“S-Spider-Man?”
Leon pointed at the Batman shadow on the clock tower.
“Nice handiwork. But are you sure Batman is free tonight? He might be beating people up at the docks, or he might be chasing the Penguin. You know, Batman is very busy. Luckily, you still have a friendly neighbor.”
In this area, there was no way Batman could drive over faster than he could swing in.
Leon lowered himself from the lamppost.
“Wait here. Don’t get hit by a stray bullet.”
The three robbers were stuffing the last bag of cash into the van.
Leon crouched on the roof of the van, waiting for them to finish before speaking.
“Hey, you three. Does your armored truck modification service require approval? As far as I know, the Gotham municipal fines for illegal modifications are quite heavy, and you’re not even wearing seatbelts.”
The leader reacted the fastest, reaching for the pistol at his waist.
Leon’s web was faster.
Before the gun could even be drawn, the man’s wrist was stuck to the car door handle.
The second robber turned to run, but Leon tripped him with a leg sweep.
Webbing entangled his ankles, leaving him hanging upside down from the van’s side mirror.
The third robber raised his hands, giving up automatically.
“Wise choice.”
Leon bundled the three of them along with the cash bags to the side of the van using webbing, then wrote a few words on a sticky note: Attempted ATM robbery, stolen funds recovered, suspects waiting on the vehicle for police.
No thanks necessary.
He stuck it on the van’s windshield.
He’d even paid for the sticky notes himself.
The old man stepped out from behind the trash can, still holding his DIY searchlight.
“T-Thank you. I thought Batman would be the one to come…”
Leon brushed the dust off his hands.
“But I got here first. And honestly, don’t you think his way of appearing is too scary? Suddenly popping out of the shadows, eyes glowing white, voice sounding like sandpaper grinding out ‘I am the night’—can your heart take that?”
The old man thought about it and shook his head.
Leon nodded.
“So, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is at your service. Free of charge. No tips. I only accept smiles.”
He shot out a web and swung to the top of the clock tower before the old man could react, vanishing into the night.
The old man stood at the convenience store entrance, holding his crooked bat searchlight, and a small smile did indeed tug at the corners of his mouth.
“Spider-Man?”
His smile turned upward, looking quite eerie.
…
The 4:00 AM wind in Gotham was like a stepmother’s slap, stinging the face.
Leon crouched on a rooftop next to the robbed bank, looking down at his new outfit.
This suit, which had cost him a hefty three hundred and sixty dollars to create, finally stopped him from looking like a red-and-blue long-john-wearing pervert out to steal manhole covers in the middle of the night.
Why hadn’t anyone complimented his cool new clothes during his patrol tonight?
What a bunch of cold people.
Those who ignore the spider don’t deserve love.
Leon reached out to touch the light gray polymer armor plate on his chest.
Although it was only a thin layer, it could at least stop a close-range shot from a small-caliber pistol.
Of course, if the opponent had a shotgun or a rifle, he’d still have to obediently perform a “die on the spot” routine.
…Just kidding.
With Spider-Sense, they wouldn’t hit him at all.
Leon complained silently to himself.
The night finally fell into a temporary silence.
While spacing out on the rooftop, Leon calculated his expenses in his head.
For this outfit, he had spent two whole hours haggling with a ghoul-like shop owner in an underground materials store.
Ballistic nylon, five yards, sixty-six dollars.
Lightweight titanium alloy plates—though only a few small pieces—he’d bargained down to sixty dollars.
The most ridiculous part was that handheld sewing machine that leaked electricity; thirty-five dollars.
Adding in various polymer fibers and super glue, his two-thousand-dollar manuscript fee had shrunk significantly in an instant.
It sounded like a lot, but in a place like Gotham where even the air smelled like money, this amount was only enough for him to eat compressed biscuits for two months.
Leon had also checked Gotham’s rental websites.
Even for the worst basement in the East End, where the wall paint peeled like dandruff, the monthly rent was five hundred dollars.
And that didn’t even include the deposit.
The key issue was that as an undocumented person, he didn’t even have a legal credit record.
Landlords looked at him like he was a mobile corpse that could die in the room at any moment.
They could rent to him, but it would cost extra—a lot extra.
Renting was impossible.
He would never rent in this lifetime.
Leon recalled the attic he was living in.
Although it leaked, had no stairs, and the vent was so narrow only a cat could crawl through, it had the advantage of being free.
In this damn world, “free” was the greatest form of justice.
Leon pulled a compressed biscuit out of his waist pouch.
The thing was as hard as a brick, and the taste was no different from chewing on dried-out cardboard.
He took a bite, and his jaw ached.
Just how little ambition did these white people in America have to invent such anti-human food?
High oil and high calories aside, some desserts were actually so sweet they gave his Spider-Sense the illusion of a “lethal threat.”
He even suspected that the reason there were so many criminals in Gotham was simply because they ate too many donuts and their brains were pickled in sugar.
Just as he was about to swallow the last bite of the cardboard-flavored biscuit, his ears twitched.
It was a sound coming from the alley.
It wasn’t the common scream of a robbery, but several small, weak whimpers from a dog.
Interspersed were the laughing insults of several men.
Leon sighed and stuffed the remaining half of the biscuit back into his pouch.
“The friendly neighborhood night shift has begun. Is there really no supervillain who wants to trade blows with me?”
He leaped down, his red and blue figure tracing a sharp arc through the air once more.
Unfortunately, the nearby buildings were a bit low, and he almost skimmed the ground.
Deep in the alley.
Three thugs in ragged leather jackets were gathered in a corner.
One of the leaders was using his mud-caked boots to viciously kick a curled-up shadow.
It was a small, yellowish dog, about the size of a palm, with its back leg dangling at a grotesque angle.
It couldn’t bark; it could only make sobbing nasal sounds.
Further back in the alley lay the stiff corpse of a mother dog.
Her fur was matted and her belly was sunken—she had clearly just given birth not long ago.
Leon landed on a nearby trash can without making a sound.
He glanced at the mother dog.
He had a slight impression of this dog from the day of the “money scattering.”
That day, the mother dog had been curled up next to a dying homeless man, persistently licking the man’s cold fingers.
The homeless man died, she was kicked by a passing gangster, and eventually she had returned to this alley with a limp.
Now, she had died here, leaving behind an even more pitiful memory for this world.
“Hey, fellas, did you pick the wrong ball for your soccer practice?”
Leon crouched on the trash can lid.
The three thugs whipped their heads around.
“Spider-Man? Oh, you changed your clothes. This set is pretty cool.”
The leader was just about to reach for the dagger at his lower back.
“Thanks, really. You’re the first person today to compliment my outfit.”
Leon’s speed was like a flash of lightning cutting through the night.
Webbing precisely stuck to the opponent’s wrist, and he yanked hard.
Crack.
That was the sound of a joint dislocating.
“That kick felt pretty good, didn’t it?”
Leon delivered a side kick that landed squarely on another thug’s chest.
The man was sent flying as if hit by a speeding truck, slamming heavily into the wall with a dull thud.
The third person was terrified and turned to run.
Leon flicked his right hand, and webbing entangled the man’s ankle as if it were alive.
“Don’t leave yet. Let’s chat about the Gotham amendments to the Animal Welfare Act.”
In less than ten seconds, the three men were stuck together back-to-back into a giant meatball and hung high up on a lamppost.
“Help! My ribs are broken!”
“Shut up. I controlled my strength—your ribs couldn’t possibly be broken. When the police come, remember to tell them you flew up there because gravity became unstable.”
Leon clapped his hands, and that ruthless energy vanished without a trace.
He walked to the corner and slowly crouched down.
The puppy huddled in the shadows, shaking like a leaf, its clear eyes filled with terror.
Leon was silent for a few seconds.
He reached out, his movements as gentle as if he were afraid of disturbing a beautiful dream.
The puppy instinctively tried to hide, but its broken back leg made it too painful to even cry out.
“Shh, don’t be afraid. I’m not a bad person.”
Leon scooped it up from the cold ground and tucked it into his arms.
He took out the remaining half of the compressed biscuit from his pouch, crushed it into crumbs with his fingers, and fed them bit by bit into the puppy’s mouth. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
The puppy tentatively licked his fingers.
It was a warm sensation.
Its tail wagged weakly, like a flame about to go out in the cold wind.
Leon stared at that wagging tail and suddenly felt a bit of a sting in his nose.
He looked left and right, confirming that there were no other living people in the alley besides the three half-dead scraps hanging from the lamppost.
And those three on the lamppost were currently being blown by the wind such that they could only see the street ahead and not this way.
Good.
No one was paying attention.
Leon lifted the bottom half of his mask, leaned in, and gave the puppy’s forehead several vigorous kisses.
One round wasn’t enough, so he did another.
Hehe.
“Listen, little guy, you’re not allowed to tell anyone about today.”
Leon threatened fiercely.
“If anyone finds out Spider-Man kissed a dog, I’ll turn you into a hot dog, you hear me?”
The puppy seemed to understand, yet also didn’t, as it just stuck out its tiny pink tongue and lightly licked Leon’s chin.
Looking at the dog in his arms, Leon began to ponder the most practical issue.
“I have to give you a name.”
He rubbed his chin, deep in thought.
“How about Wang Cai? No, no one in this part of the world would understand that. It sounds too rustic.”
“How about Wade? Forget it, I actually quite like him.”
A thought suddenly flashed through Leon’s mind.
He remembered the giant bat searchlight he had seen on the tower earlier.
He thought of that pitch-black big bat who always hid in the shadows and looked at everyone as if they owed him five million dollars.
“Got it.”
Leon looked down at the puppy, an extremely mischievous smile appearing on his lips.
“Your name will be Bruce.”
“This name will definitely be popular in Gotham, no doubt about it.”
He paused, feeling that he was truly talented at naming.
“Bruce, from now on, the two of us will be the greatest duo in this dump.”
The puppy seemed very satisfied with the name, wagging its tail more vigorously than before.
Ten meters away, in the shadows atop the clock tower.
A tall figure was perfectly blended into the darkness.
Bruce Wayne, or rather Batman, was silently watching everything in the alley.
He had originally come following the signal of the Bat-Signal, only to stumble upon this scene.
The suit had been upgraded.
He quickly recorded on his portable terminal: ballistic nylon material, with non-industrially processed titanium alloy plates, obvious signs of hand-sewing.
This meant the boy didn’t have a large organization supporting him.
He was improving his equipment bit by bit with his own hands.
Then, he saw the scene of the boy kissing the dog’s head.
And he heard that name.
He was a bit far away, but remember—Bruce Wayne can read lips.
“Bruce.”
At that moment, Batman’s eyelid twitched.
Under the cover of his mask, no one could see how spectacular the Dark Knight’s expression was right now.
It was a complex reaction somewhere between speechless, absurd, and an indescribable emotion.
Under the “Spider-Man” file on his terminal, he added a new tag.
Danger Level: Downgraded.
Notes: Extremely lacks social common sense, possesses a severe tendency for snarky remarks.
Recommend continuous observation of mental health status.
Batman retreated silently, like a drop of water merging into the ocean.
Leon sat at the end of the alley, unaware that his “heroic feat” just now had been fully witnessed by the very person he often used for jokes.
He carefully used webbing to stabilize the puppy’s broken back leg.
Though his technique was amateur, it was secure.
“Let’s go, Bruce. I’ll take you back to our leaky mansion.”
He stood up and looked back at the mother dog’s corpse.
There was no dirt here, and no shovel.
He found a relatively clean piece of cardboard in the Gotham ruins and covered the mother dog’s body.
Then, he moved the mother dog’s corpse to a corner sheltered from the wind.
“Though it’s not much use…”
Leon said in a low voice.
Cradling Bruce in his arms, he shot a web and soared into the air.
The red and blue figure vanished into the night.
Bruce, in his arms, huddled inside the suit, feeling one of the few sources of warmth in this world.
As Leon swung, he was still muttering.
“Naming a dog Bruce… that shouldn’t count as insulting Batman, right?”
“Whatever, it’s not like he knows anyway.”
“Vigilantes don’t even have official positions…”
In the distance, a new Bat-Signal flickered on the clouds, as if silently responding to his question.