Chen Mo squatted atop a rusted drainage pipe in the East End, squeezing the energy bar in his hand.
It was too hard. He couldn't bite through it, yet he couldn't bring himself to throw it away.
What the hell? An energy bar that even Spider-Man couldn't bite through--who exactly was this manufactured for?
Adhering to the principle that every grain of food comes from hard work, Chen Mo stuffed it back into his pocket and patted the crumbs off his hands.
Tonight's patrol was already wrapped up. He had originally planned to go back and feed the dog, then continue rushing his draft so he could hand in the next segment sooner and get his paycheck faster.
Bruce's broken leg was almost completely healed; yesterday, he had already started chewing on Chen Mo's shoes.
Then, the gunshots rang out.
It felt exactly like when you're just about to clock out, and your boss walks over and dumps a bunch of project tasks on you.
And it wasn't just sporadic gunfire. It was the kind of dense, explosive crackle where an entire street seemed to be set ablaze all at once.
A massive project task.
Two off-road vehicles covered in black skull emblems surged out from the street corner. Thompson submachine guns extended from the windows, spewing tongues of fire across half the street.
The suit-clad thugs from the opposing Falcone family instantly returned fire. The sound of shell casings hitting the ground was as dense as a torrential downpour crashing onto a tin roof.
Storefront windows along the street were shattered into pieces, cafe awnings were shot into fishnets, and even a couple of streetlights were blown out by stray bullets.
A drenched homeless man crawled out of a cardboard box next to a fire hydrant, cursed a "motherfucker," and shrank right back inside.
Chen Mo sighed. "Bullets don't cost money, huh? Streetlights don't need fixing? Gotham's GDP is being blasted away by you guys."
In the middle of the street, a little girl holding a flower basket stood frozen in place. The basket in her hands had overturned on the ground, and several white carnations had rolled into the muddy water.
The driver of a black sedan had already been shot dead, his upper body slumped over the steering wheel, his foot still pressed hard on the gas pedal.
The out-of-control vehicle behaved like a mad bull. Its tires scraped against the pavement, emitting a piercing smell of burning rubber as it skidded sideways, hurtling straight toward the little girl.
Chen Mo launched himself directly off the third-floor drainage pipe. His entire body was like a pebble fired from a slingshot, tracing a red-and-blue straight line through the air.
With his arms spread wide, two lines of webbing shot simultaneously from his left and right wrists, precisely adhering to the sedan's front bumper.
He landed, dropped into a horse stance with his knees slightly bent, and the muscles in his waist, abdomen, and back instantly tensed.
At that moment, his entire strength poured into his arms. The asphalt pavement beneath his feet was directly stamped with two deep footprints.
The sedan let out a screeching sound of twisting metal. The front bumper was violently yanked out of shape by his raw strength, and the entire chassis brushed past the edge of the little girl's skirt, veering off its original trajectory before crashing into the adjacent cafe with a loud boom.
The glass curtain wall shattered all over the ground. The water pipe of the espresso machine burst open, spraying hot water mixed with glass shards across half the wall.
Chen Mo's silhouette blurred. Before the little girl could even process what was happening, he scooped her into his arms.
Cradling her back with his left hand and protecting her head with his right, he took a few leaps and bounds, landing behind a sturdy stone pillar in the rear.
Squatting down, he placed her on the ground.
The little girl stared at him blankly, her lips still trembling, her eyes welling with tears that didn't quite fall.
Chen Mo looked down at her, then glanced at the flower basket scattered on the ground.
He picked up a white carnation from the muddy water that hadn't been crushed yet, blew the mud spots off the petals, and tucked it into a seam on the shoulder of his suit--right next to that stitch line he had sewn himself, which looked crooked like a crawling centipede.
"Be a good girl, go hide in the alley for a bit. Close your eyes and count nicely. By the time you open them, everything here will be peaceful."
The little girl stared at the two white eye patches on his mask, dazed for a second, and then spoke up: "Count to what?"
Chen Mo thought about it for a moment.
"Let's go with a hundred. If you count wrong, start over."
She nodded, closed her eyes, and began to count.
Chen Mo stood up, turned around, and leapt into the center of the crossfire.
The two factions were right in the heat of battle.
Falcone's men were hunkered down behind two bulletproof sedans, changing magazines. One bald guy was shouting into a walkie-talkie, "East End, East End, we need reinforcements!"
Before his voice could even land, a volley of bullets forced him back behind the car.
The members of the False Face Society under Black Mask were pressing forward, taking advantage of their numerical superiority. A burly man dragged a drum-fed shotgun out from the backseat of an off-road vehicle and blasted a shot toward Falcone's direction. He didn't hit anyone, but he blew a roadside fire hydrant into a fountain. A column of water shot three meters high, drenching the homeless man who had just shrunk back into his cardboard box.
"Fuck!" The homeless man scrambled out of the cardboard box on all fours, hugged his bedding, and ran deep into the alley.
Chen Mo ducked sideways to dodge a string of stray bullets. The rounds zipped past his ear, chipping a row of debris out of the red brick wall opposite him.
He casually shot a glob of webbing, precisely sealing the barrel of a False Face Society gunman.
Just as the guy was about to pull the trigger, the barrel backfired. The shell casing exploded out from the side and smacked him in the jaw, leaving nothing but a smoking, flared remnant in his hand.
"Wow, you sell flowers too?"
Before the man could answer, Chen Mo had already flipped away.
Sweeping his legs across, he kicked two thugs who were about to throw grenades flat onto the ground.
As the grenades rolled out of their hands, Chen Mo, quick-witted and agile, shot two lines of webbing, pinning their hands and the spare magazines at their waists together.
The safety pins hadn't been pulled, but when the two men looked down and saw that green iron lump in their palms, both of their faces turned as white as freshly painted walls. They froze in place, not even daring to take a deep breath.
"Playing with fire in the middle of the night--watch out or you'll wet the bed."
He landed, propped himself up with both hands, and crawled rapidly along the wall, circling around to the side.
A bald leader from Falcone's side was waving a Uzi submachine gun and shouting, "Move up!" No sooner had the words left his mouth and he had taken two steps forward than his back collar was precisely snagged by a strand of webbing. His entire person was hoisted up like a fish yanked by a fishing rod, leaving him dangling from a streetlight pole, swaying back and forth as the submachine gun slipped from his grip and clattered to the ground.
"Sorry, this area is closed tonight. Can you guys switch to another neighborhood to fight? I just finished patrolling this sector, you know. I don't want to patrol it again. Besides, this is entirely a residential area--do you guys have any sense of civic decency?"
"Who the fuck are you?!" The bald guy struggled and shouted from the streetlight.
"Seriously? You don't know me?"
Chen Mo pulled a crumpled sticky note out of his utility pouch and slapped it onto the bald guy's forehead.
On it, a line of text was written in a crooked scrawl: Your Friendly Neighbor Spider-Man. Scope of business includes robbery, brawling, intimidation, and illegal possession of firearms. Engaging in the above behaviors will result in you being hung from a streetlight.
The bald guy opened his mouth to curse, but the sticky note was blown by the wind, covering his eyes, leaving him able to emit only a muffled, indistinct roar.
The remaining men began to panic.
Several of Black Mask's underlings exchanged glances. While retreating, one of them shouted into a communicator: "Boss, we ran into that Spider guy--yeah, the one who hangs people from streetlights--"
Before he could finish his sentence, his mouth was sealed by a glob of webbing. He was hoisted up and stuck to the teetering signboard at the entrance of the cafe.
Falcone's men weren't stupid either. Taking advantage of Chen Mo dishing out output on Black Mask's side, they scrambled to drag their wounded into the cars, preparing to flee.
One of them looked back at the street full of unlucky bastards hanging from streetlights before diving through the car door. The next second, the door slammed shut without hesitation, the tires screeched against the ground with a burning smell, and the engine roared as they vanished around the street corner.
Black Mask's people fled too. Aside from the few pinned to the ground by webbing, the rest all bolted into the alleys, their footsteps fading into the darkness.
Right at that moment, Chen Mo's Spider-Sense rang out again.
Squatting on the streetlight, he didn't turn around.
Executing a direct backflip, his body traced a perfect arc in the air, and the tip of his toe precisely kicked the barrel of a pistol fitted with a silencer.
The pistol flew out, smashed against a wall, and backfired.
The gunman was an elite marksman under Black Mask. He had risen silently from the ruins of the cafe, switched to a silenced pistol, and aimed right at the back of Chen Mo's neck.
Before the gunman could even react, Chen Mo had already shot a web in mid-air to bind his waist, using the momentum to pull himself over. His knee drove into the man's chest, pinning him entirely against the wall.
The impact rattled the red bricks of the wall, cracking a fine line into them.
"A sneak attack? How classless. How does your boss usually train you guys? Last time, there was another guy who tried to creep up from behind; I left him hanging on a billboard to air-dry for a whole night. Do you know him? No? Never mind then."
He pulled the magazine out of the gunman's tactical vest and casually tossed it into the distance.
The magazine smacked onto the head of a mobster tied to a streetlight. The man groaned, harboring resentment but not daring to speak up.
Chen Mo let go, and the gunman slid down to sit on the ground. The look in his eyes was finally no longer vicious; it was sheer bewilderment. He completely couldn't comprehend how he had been detected.
At the end of the street, a low, heavy engine roar approached from far to near. Two cold, white lights pierced through the shadows, resembling the eyes of a steel monster.
The vehicle body glided out from the mouth of the alley, almost soundless, like a deeper shadow peeling away from the darkness.
Chen Mo, who had returned to the top of the streetlight, looked along the light.
A pitch-black chassis, sharp-angled armor plating, and tires taller than his entire height.
A thought popped up in his mind: Given current gas prices, how much fuel does this thing burn just by stepping on the pedal?
Then he quickly snuffed that thought out, because calculating it would only make him feel worse.
Chen Mo waved his hand at the pitch-black armored vehicle.
"Hey! You're late. They're all mine."
He pointed at the street full of mobsters tied into various poses by webbing, his tone carrying an unquestionable hint of pride.
"On the left are Black Mask's guys, on the right is Falcone's family, and that bald guy in the middle is the leader. They're labeled, so they're easy to recognize. Do you want to come down and take inventory? I've sorted them by gang, and even ordered them by rank. The one hanging from the highest lamp post--he just tried to shoot the back of my neck. Particularly, especially classless."
Batman did not reply.
He stepped out from the shadows, his cowl's lenses coldly scanning the gunmen tied up like silkworm cocoons all over the ground.
The sticky note on the bald guy's forehead flapped loudly in the wind, the crooked handwriting slightly smeared by the breeze.
His gaze lingered on the bald guy for a second, then moved to the unlucky bastard wrapped in webbing on the signboard at the cafe entrance, and finally landed on Chen Mo.
Chen Mo hopped down from the streetlight, patting the dust off his hands.
"Which of the two sides were you chasing after?"
"Roman Sionis's men raided one of Falcone's underground trading points."
Batman's voice was as deep as ever, his words as sparse as ever.
But the good news was, he was finally willing to answer.
"Yeah, Spider-Man and Batman VS Black Mask. This ought to make the papers tomorrow, right?"