The night wind at the Gotham docks was the same as always, fishy enough to feel like an entire dead fish had been stuffed into your lungs.
The air was a mix of sea salt, rust, and that unwashable burnt smell left behind after diesel fuel combusted.
The moon was completely obscured by the smoke and dust of the industrial zone. Only a few searchlights from the cranes cast down from above, their tragic white 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. His scales rubbed against the concrete floor, making a faint scratching sound like sandpaper on a wall.
He had been crouching here for four whole days.
The day he got out of Blackgate Penitentiary, Maroni had personally sent men to pick him up. The lineup was no small matter: three bulletproof cars, a box of Cuban cigars, and the line, "The entire East District knows you're back."
The meaning was clear: come out and establish dominance, terrify those ungrateful bastards who wanted to double-cross the family, and take a trip to the docks to collect a few bad debts. Those dock workers thought that just because Scarface was in the ICU, no one would dare demand money from them anymore.
They were all old gamblers who played dead when they owed loan sharks. They would behave after a good lesson.
Killer Croc took the job, but that wasn't what was on his mind.
He was thinking about Batman. The last time he was sent to Blackgate by Batman, that black cape under the interrogation lights felt like a knife tearing through his retina.
His eyeballs rolled in their sockets, his vertical pupils narrowing into slits in the dark.
He was going to wait.
He would wait for that pitch-black monster to jump down from the roof, and then he would use these claws to tear his armor off piece by piece, chew it up, and spit it in front of him.
Of course, he still did the job the boss gave him. Those few unlucky bastards should have been hanging from the utility poles for a while now; they were probably about air-dried by now.
As for that little bug in the red and blue tights, 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 taken it to heart.
Crouching here tonight was still to wait for Batman.
Not far away.
Chen Mo crouched at the top of a gantry crane, hunching his back like an owl perched on a branch.
He rubbed his aching ribs.
Actually, the injury was already healed. It was pure phantom pain.
The wind was strong tonight, so he tugged his mask down over the bridge of his nose again.
The stitching on his shoulder was exceptionally glaring in the moonlight. Chen Mo stared at the massive, dark green creature below and leaped.
His body traced an arc in the air, arms outspread, his suit flashing a dull red and blue in the moonlight.
He landed on top of the container diagonally opposite Killer Croc, the soles of his feet making a very faint thud as they contacted the sheet metal.
He didn't wait for the other party to speak, directly pressing the homemade gadget in his hand--a sonic generator pieced together from scrap radio parts and an amplifier.
A piercing, high-frequency noise tore through the air of the docks, like fingernails scraping across glass.
Killer Croc suddenly clutched his head, a painful roar escaping his throat. His entire body staggered back two steps, his back slamming into a container, denting the sheet metal.
"Lesson one. Reptiles are relatively sensitive to high-frequency vibrations. Even though you look like an oversized gecko, the biological logic still applies."
Chen Mo's voice drifted down from above, carrying a calmness that made people want to punch him.
Killer Croc snapped out of the dizziness caused by the noise, his vertical pupils bloodshot.
He shook his head, his scales clacking against each other with a faint metallic sound. Then, he raised his hideous face and let out an ear-splitting roar at the red and blue figure above.
"You again, you little flea in pajamas! I'm going to chew up every bone in your body!"
"Hey! A lot of people have said my new suit is cool! You're not allowed to call it pajamas!"
Killer Croc lunged forward fiercely.
His massive body soared into the air, his tail whipping out a huge arc behind him. His scales reflected a damp, cold light under the searchlights, looking like a giant moss-covered boulder launched from a slingshot.
Chen Mo flipped down from the container, his left hand shooting web fluid to stick to a side crane arm. Pulling horizontally, his entire body rotated 180 degrees in mid-air, his legs kicking off the side of the container.
With his fingers almost brushing the ground, he could feel the concrete debris kicked up by Killer Croc's stomp flying past the side of his face.
Killer Croc missed, his sharp claws smashing into the concrete ground, sending sparks flying half a man high.
Just as he was about to recover his stance, Chen Mo had already bounced up. What he shot out wasn't ordinary webbing.
This time, the threads gleamed with a very faint yellowish tint under the searchlights, like some kind of diluted amber, carrying a more viscous texture than usual as they trailed through the air.
Industrial adhesive. He had spent half an hour crouching in a hardware store to pick it out.
The web-shooters were handmade by him.
He had originally thought that since he could spin webs, he wouldn't need to hand-craft this stuff.
The Gotham Police Department should reimburse him for his material costs!
Isn't there some kind of Friendly Citizen Award or something? Preferably with a few thousand dollars attached.
The web net ensnared Killer Croc's ankle. It wasn't the usual lightweight wrapping, but like a soaked cable--once it wrapped around, it began to tighten.
Killer Croc tried to lift his leg, only to find a huge clump of chemical-laced webbing stuck to the bottom of his foot, dragging up pebbles, dirt, and debris from the dock floor.
"Technology changes destiny. As expected, a person still has to use their brain."
Chen Mo crouched on the container, chattering away while wrapping another strand around his wrist.
Killer Croc lowered his head and pulled his foot out. The webbing on his ankle snapped, but the gaps between his scales were plastered with adhesive that hadn't completely solidified.
With every step he took, a layer of crushed stones stuck to the bottom of his foot, as if he were stepping on chewed bubble gum.
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 hit the ground, grabbing the crane's base with both claws and beginning to climb up.
The metal structure twisted and deformed under his terrifying grip, bolts flying off one by one.
Chen Mo crouched at the top of the crane arm, looking down as the creature scrambled below.
He pressed another button on the amplifier, 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 canal. His hearing and balance completely failed at that moment. He suddenly clutched his head with both hands, his entire body falling straight down from a height of over ten meters. With a boom, he smashed into the ground, kicking off a ring of scattered dust as his back impacted the floor.
Chen Mo leaped from the top of the crane arm, shooting web fluid three meters above the ground to stick to a container on the side. Borrowing the force to pull horizontally, he turned his body sideways, took another step against the side of the container, spun around in the air, and landed at the deepest three-way intersection.
The spot he chose to stand on was very deliberate. To his left were three stacked freezer units, to his right was a row of un-unloaded titanium alloy steel pipes, and behind him was a dead end.
A perfect "physics lab."
Killer Croc climbed up, spitting saliva and sand, and charged over.
Each of his steps cracked the concrete floor. When he crashed into the three-way intersection, his massive body instantly filled the narrow space.
Chen Mo stood just under two meters in front of him, motionless.
Killer Croc bared his mouthful of crooked fangs. "Caught you! I'm going to--"
Chen Mo pulled the master control web line.
An unusually thick thread snapped up from his fingertips, sounding like a plucked guitar string in the dark.
This thread wasn't pulled at random. It was a "fuse" he had twisted together using half a bottle of raw web fluid and high-strength nylon after drawing maps on his floor dozens of times last night.
The moment it tightened, all the surrounding load-bearing points snapped simultaneously.
The iron wedges originally used to prop up the boxes at the bottom of the left freezer units were pulled away by him. The wooden support racks of the steel pipe pile on the right were pulled apart. The low-level web lines previously arranged on both sides of the passage all tightened.
Those heavy goods, which had been resting by inertia, slowly collapsed under the influence of gravity, then accelerated, making loud noises as they toppled into their preset tracks like falling dominoes.
The angle at which the containers tipped precisely wedged Killer Croc into the gap in the middle. Three iron boxes weighing tens of tons combined pressed down above his waist, narrowing his entire body into a space less than a meter wide. His legs were locked in a half-squatting position, and his tail was pinned beneath the bottom of the container on the other side, completely unable to be pulled out.
Killer Croc struggled desperately, his muscles bulging all over, his scales scraping against the sheet metal with a piercing metallic sound. Yet, his body was welded solid by the steel on both sides, his breathing so constricted that his eyes swelled.
Chen Mo didn't stop.
He moved right above Killer Croc, crouching up high. He adjusted his web fluid to the lowest setting to increase viscosity, and then rolls of webbing showered down over the creature's head, mouth, and body. Each layer solidified rapidly in the air, and each layer revealed that very faint yellowish hue.
The more he struggled, the tighter it wrapped.
Five minutes later, the docks returned to silence. There were no more impacts or roars, leaving only the whistling sound of the wind blowing through the steel frame of the gantry crane, and an occasional metallic squeeze or two from deep within the containers.
Chen Mo stood up, looked down at Killer Croc, who was wrapped into a "silkworm cocoon" by the webbing and iron boxes, and then took a deep breath.
"You're reimbursing my medical expenses. Iodine, bandages, compressed biscuits. Also, the undershirt I used to sew my clothes, you have to pay for that." He held up two fingers, gesturing a number.
"Titanium alloy patches, shoulder armor--not expensive. But the labor cost is high. I sewed it myself, you know?"
He spread his hands and shrugged, pulling his mask down a bit. The self-sewn mask kept riding up, so this counted as tidying his appearance.
"Now, can you sincerely compliment me and say my suit looks nice?"
Killer Croc, whose mouth was wrapped in webbing, wanted to curse but couldn't.
Just as Chen Mo turned around to leave, his movements suddenly paused. His Spider-Sense tingled slightly, as if some massive, quiet presence was pressing down from above, blocking half the moonlight.
He raised his head.
At the very top of the gantry crane, that black silhouette was silently looking down at him.
The corners of the cape drifted slightly in one direction with the wind. Other than that, the entire person looked like a stone gargoyle, almost entirely integrated with the main beam.
His eyes couldn't be seen clearly, nor could his expression. There was only a silhouette even darker than this sky.
If it weren't for his good eyesight, he probably wouldn't have noticed at all.
Separated by the distance of an entire yard and several layers of intersecting containers, one looked up while the other looked down. In between them was the dock floor, newly littered with debris, and a large crocodile wrapped into a cocoon.
"Hello Bats, don't you want to say thank you to your good colleague? He just saved you a huge amount of workload!"