The night wind at The Docks in Gotham was the same as ever, so fishy it felt like a whole dead fish had been stuffed into your lungs.
The air was a mix of sea salt, rust, and the lingering burnt smell of spent diesel.
The moon was completely obscured by the soot and dust of the industrial zone; only a few crane searchlights shone down from above, their pale light slicing the container yard into sharp shadows.
Killer Croc crouched in the gap between two rows of containers, his thick tail resting on the ground, making a raspy sound like sandpaper on a wall as his scales rubbed against the concrete.
He had been lurking here for four whole days.
On the day he got out of Blackgate Penitentiary, Maroni personally sent men to pick him up with quite a display: three bulletproof cars, a box of Cuban cigars, and the message, “The whole East End knows you’re back.”
The meaning was clear: come out and establish dominance, scare the daylights out of those treacherous bastards, and while you’re at it, collect some bad debts at The Docks—those longshoremen thought that since Scarface was in the ICU, no one would dare ask them for money.
They were all old gamblers who played dead when it came to their loan shark debts; they’d behave after a little lesson.
Killer Croc took the job, but that wasn’t what was on his mind.
He was thinking about Batman.
The last time Batman sent him to Blackgate Penitentiary, that black cape under the interrogation lights had felt like a blade tearing through his retinas.
His eyeballs rolled in their sockets, his vertical pupils narrowing into slits in the darkness.
He would wait.
Wait for that pitch-black monster to leap down from the rooftops, and then use these claws to tear his armor off piece by piece, chewing it up and spitting it out in front of him.
Of course, he still did the job the boss assigned; those unlucky bastards should have been hanging from the utility poles for a while now, probably almost air-dried by this point.
As for that little bug in the red and blue spandex, he didn’t care about him at all.
Bumping into him at The Docks that day was a pure accident; knocking him flying was just knocking him flying, he hadn’t given it a second thought.
He was lurking here tonight specifically to wait for Batman.
Not far away.
Leon crouched atop the Gantry Crane, hunched over like an owl perched on a branch.
He rubbed his aching ribs.
Actually, the injury had already healed; it was pure phantom pain.
The wind was strong tonight, so he pulled his mask up a bit further over the bridge of his nose.
The stitching on the shoulder was particularly eyesore-inducing in the moonlight.
Leon stared at the dark green behemoth below and leaped.
His body traced an arc through the air, arms outspread, his suit flashing a dull red and blue in the moonlight.
He landed on top of the container diagonally across from Killer Croc, his feet making a very faint “thud” as they hit the metal.
Without waiting for the other to speak, he directly pressed the homemade device in his hand—an Acoustic Generator cobbled together from old radio parts and a megaphone.
A piercing high-frequency noise tore through the air of The Docks, sounding like nails scraping against glass.
Killer Croc suddenly clutched his head, a pained roar erupting from his throat.
He staggered back two steps, his back slamming into a container and denting the metal.
“Lesson one: Reptiles are sensitive to high-frequency vibrations. Even though you look like a giant gecko, biological logic still applies.”
Leon’s voice drifted down from above, carrying a calmness that made one want to punch him.
Killer Croc recovered from the dizziness caused by the noise, his vertical pupils bloodshot.
He shook his head, his scales clicking together with a metallic sound, then raised his hideous face and let out a deafening roar at the red and blue figure above.
“Hey! Plenty of people have said my new outfit looks cool! Don’t call it pajamas!”
Killer Croc lunged forward.
His massive body soared through the air, his tail swinging in a wide arc behind him.
His scales reflected a cold, damp light under the searchlights, looking like a moss-covered boulder launched from a catapult.
Leon flipped off the container, his left hand’s Spider-web sticking to a side crane arm.
He pulled sideways, rotating his body 180 degrees in mid-air and kicking off the side of the container.
His fingers were almost touching the ground; he could feel the concrete debris kicked up by Killer Croc’s previous stomp flying past his face.
Killer Croc missed his mark, his claws smashing into the concrete and sending sparks flying half a man high.
Just as he was about to recover, Leon had already bounced up.
What he shot out wasn’t ordinary Spider-web.
This time, the webbing shimmered with a very faint yellow luster under the searchlights, like diluted amber, possessing a thicker, more viscous texture than usual as it stretched through the air.
Industrial adhesive—he’d spent half an hour picking it out at a hardware store.
The Spider Web Shooters?
Hand-crafted by him.
He had originally thought that being able to produce silk himself meant he wouldn’t have to build these things.
The Gotham City Police Department should really reimburse him for the cost of his materials!
Isn’t there a “Friendly Citizen Award” or something?
Ideally with a few thousand dollars attached.
The web ensnared Killer Croc’s ankle—not the usual light wrapping, but like a soaked cable that began to tighten as soon as it took hold.
Killer Croc tried to lift his leg, only to find a large glob of chemically-enhanced Spider-web stuck to his sole, dragging up stones, dirt, and debris from the floor of The Docks.
“Technology changes destinies; humans really do have to use their brains.”
Leon crouched on the container, rambling as he wound another strand around his wrist.
Killer Croc looked down and yanked his foot free, snapping the Spider-web on his ankle, but the gaps between his scales were now filled with half-cured adhesive.
With every step, a layer of gravel stuck to his sole, like stepping on chewed bubblegum.
His walnut-sized brain could sense trouble, but he wasn’t the type to back down.
With a roar, he rushed to the base of the Gantry Crane before the sound even faded, grabbing the crane’s foundation with both claws and beginning to climb.
The metal structure twisted and deformed under his terrifying grip, bolts popping off one by one.
Leon crouched at the top of the crane arm, looking down as the other scrambled up.
He pressed another button on the megaphone, turning up the output frequency and aiming the speaker at the narrow space beneath the crane arm.
The high-frequency sound waves slammed into Killer Croc’s head like a pot of boiling oil poured into his ear canals; his hearing and balance failed instantly.
He suddenly clutched his head with both hands, his entire body falling straight down from over ten meters high, hitting the ground with a “boom” that sent a ring of debris and dust scattering.
Leon leaped from the top of the crane arm, firing a Spider-web at a height of three meters to stick to a side container.
Using the momentum to pull himself across, he rotated his body, kicked off the side of the container again, looped through the air, and landed at the innermost three-way intersection.
His positioning was very deliberate: three stacked freezers to his left, a row of un-unloaded titanium alloy steel pipes to his right, and a dead end behind him.
A perfect “physics laboratory.”
Killer Croc scrambled up, spitting out saliva and sand, and charged.
Every step he took cracked the concrete; as he crashed into the intersection, his massive frame instantly filled the narrow space.
Leon stood just less than two meters in front of him, motionless.
“Got you! I’m going to—”
Leon pulled the master Spider-web.
An unusually thick strand of silk snapped up from his fingertips, vibrating in the darkness like a plucked guitar string.
This strand wasn’t pulled at random; it was the “fuse” he had spent half a bottle of Spider-web fluid and high-strength nylon to twist together after drawing maps on his floor dozens of times last night.
The moment it tightened, all the surrounding stress points gave way simultaneously.
The iron blocks used to prop up the freezers on the left were yanked away, the wooden support frames for the steel pipes on the right were snapped, and the low-level webs previously set up on both sides of the passage all tightened.
The heavy cargo, held in place by inertia, began to collapse slowly under gravity, then accelerated with a loud crash, falling like dominoes into their preset paths.
The angle of the falling containers precisely wedged Killer Croc into the gap between them.
Three iron boxes, totaling dozens of tons, pressed down above his waist, narrowing his space to less than a meter wide.
His legs were locked in a semi-squat, and his tail was pinned under the bottom of another container, completely stuck.
Killer Croc struggled desperately, his muscles bulging and his scales scraping against the metal with an ear-piercing screech, but his body was welded in place by the steel on both sides.
Even breathing made his eyes bulge.
Leon didn’t stop.
He circled to a point directly above Killer Croc, crouched high up, and adjusted his Spider-web fluid to the lowest setting to increase viscosity.
Then, rolls of webbing were layered over the creature’s head, mouth, and body.
Each layer solidified rapidly in the air, each showing that faint yellow tint.
The more he struggled, the tighter it bound him.
Five minutes later, quiet returned to The Docks.
There were no more crashes or roars, only the whistling of the wind through the Gantry Crane’s metal frame and the occasional metallic creak from deep within the containers.
Leon stood up, looked down at the “silkworm baby” Killer Croc wrapped in Spider-web and iron boxes, and took a deep breath.
“You’re paying for my medical expenses. Iodine, bandages, compressed biscuits. And that undershirt I used to sew my suit—you’re paying for that too.” He held up two fingers, indicating an amount.
“Titanium alloy patches, shoulder armor—they aren’t expensive. But the labor cost is. I sewed it myself, you know?”
He shrugged and pulled down his mask; the self-sewn mask kept riding up, so this was his way of tidying his appearance.
“Now, can you sincerely compliment me and say my suit looks great?”
Mouth bound by Spider-web, Killer Croc wanted to curse but couldn’t.
Leon was just about to turn and leave when he suddenly paused.
His Spider-Sense tingled slightly, as if some massive, silent presence was pressing down from above, blocking out half the moonlight.
He looked up.
At the very top of the Gantry Crane, a black silhouette was silently looking down at him.
The hem of the cape drifted slightly in the wind; otherwise, the figure was like a stone gargoyle, almost merging with the main beam.
His eyes were invisible, his expression unseen—only a silhouette darker than the sky itself.
If it weren’t for his sharp eyesight, he probably wouldn’t have noticed at all.
Across the distance of the entire yard and several layers of stacked containers, one looked up while the other looked down.
Between them lay the floor of The Docks, now littered with debris, and a giant crocodile wrapped like a silkworm cocoon.
“Hello, Batman. How about saying thank you to your good colleague? He’s saved you a massive amount of work!”