Batman ignored his trash talk.
He pressed a button on his utility belt.
Click.
The car door slid upward and outward, sending a scent of premium leather mixed with coolant wafting into Chen Mo's mask.
Right next to the driver's seat sat a shotgun seat, installed nice and steady. The leather was gleaming and still smelled faintly of fresh glue, looking completely out of place next to the surrounding dashboards covered in battle scars.
Standing by the car door, Chen Mo froze for a full two seconds.
"Now that's more like it."
Muttering under his breath, Chen Mo climbed inside with somewhat stiff movements. The moment his butt hit the cushion, his entire body sank into it.
This tactile sensation was more than just one notch above the rotten wooden plank bed in his leaky attic.
He felt the leather cushion, then looked at the cluster of flickering, cold-lit display screens.
It came with an adjustable headrest and a four-point safety harness, unlike the iron frame he had salvaged from the junkyard.
Over the past couple of days, digging through trash cans every single day looking for scraps... bah, spit! The little spider, whose red algae machine was still recyclable, felt a massive psychological impact at this very moment.
He hated capitalists.
"This seat... did you weld it on out of pity for me after getting back last time? I'm touched."
Batman pulled down a lever.
"Sit tight."
The roar of the engine exploded inside the warehouse.
"When I said use more words, I didn't mean for you to literally say just two words, alright?"
The Batmobile surged forward like an enraged black panther. Chen Mo was slammed against the backrest by the inertia, and the section of his spine he had bumped when jumping down from the shipping container earlier happened to be perfectly supported by the seat.
His mouth didn't stop for a second while he scrambled around looking for a seatbelt.
"Slow down! This initial acceleration of yours is catching up to a launch track. I didn't notice it when I was clinging to the roof last time, but the pushback inside is actually this intense."
Does this car really have a seatbelt?
Does the Batmobile really need a seatbelt?
Wow, it actually does!
Finally getting his hands on the seatbelt, Chen Mo didn't click it all the way in. He merely brought the buckle over loosely, ensuring he could release it at any moment.
After mixing around Gotham's streets for so long, it was hard to completely trust one's life to someone else's brake pads.
Even if that someone else was Batman.
Batman steered the wheel with one hand while rapidly swiping across the tactical screen with the other. Red light-dots blinked on the map.
"Black Mask's main force is swallowing up the last few peripheral strongholds of Falcone. Hold the perimeter. Don't let anyone escape."
Chen Mo turned his head to stare at the rapidly flowing data, his mouth still running.
"Don't you get dizzy looking at this while driving? Just staring at it makes my eyes blur. There's too much information visible, it's a bit of an overload for me."
Though his mouth wouldn't stop, his eyes were locked onto Batman's operations like a scanner.
The shortcut key for map zooming was on the left, the infrared thermal imaging toggle was on the bottom right, and the target marker was that triangle.
He memorized them all silently in his head.
"You could consider upgrading your goggles a bit."
"What?" Chen Mo froze again.
The Batmobile drove through an abandoned railway bridge tunnel, its chassis bumping slightly on the potholed road.
A few empty shell casings were run over by the tires, bouncing up and striking the undercarriage with crisp, metallic clangs.
"But seriously, when exactly did you add this seat? It clearly wasn't here last time. Did you really go back and modify it specifically for this?"
Batman still didn't speak. He only pressed the accelerator down further. The low-frequency vibration of the engine filled the entire cabin.
He didn't understand what there was to ask about a question whose answer was already obvious at a single glance.
Leaning against the backrest, Chen Mo's chatterbox of a mouth finally paused for a brief moment. Outside the window, the lights of Gotham blurred into a hazy, yellow glow through the fog.
He recalled the last time he clung to the roof of this car, when the wind howled into his mask, blowing his tender little face until it throbbed with pain.
Back then, he had truly felt sorry for his own face, which was handsome enough to shock the heavens and move the earth to tears.
Now, it was very quiet inside the car.
Chen Mo shifted into a more comfortable sitting position, his fingers lightly playing with the seatbelt buckle, his movements as casual as if he were testing out a subway seat.
He cast a sidelong glance at Batman.
That profile showed absolutely no expression under the cold light of the dashboard. The edge of the bandage on his left shoulder was already soaked through with blood, but the hand gripping the steering wheel was as steady as if it were welded onto it.
Chen Mo withdrew his gaze, uncharacteristically remaining silent.
He really had talked a bit too much; his throat was sore.
A peak human--truly peak.
It was hard to imagine that the guy was actually just a human, the kind of human without any superpowers.
The Batmobile suddenly pulled a sharp drift, charging into a dark alleyway. Intense, dense muzzle flashes were leaping frantically ahead, and sparks from bullets striking iron gates were exceptionally jarring in the darkness.
"We're here."
The moment the car door slid open, Chen Mo launched himself out.
While still in mid-air, both his wrists were already aimed at the buildings on either side of the alley. Webbing wove into a dense net in the air, instantly sealing off the escape route on the left.
He didn't stop upon landing. Tapping his toes against the wall, he used the momentum to flip backward onto the rooftop.
"Fellas down there! Ever heard of workplace safety? Playing with fire in the middle of the night will get your butt kicked by Grandma!"
His hands frantically pulled the web-shooters.
In just ten seconds or so, the three alleys surrounding the perimeter of the stronghold and the two back-door exits were all tightly sealed.
The webbing gleamed with a very faint yellowish luster under the moonlight--that was the industrial adhesive he had added after modifying his formula. Once dried, it was twice as tough as ordinary webbing.
The last member of the False Face Society who wanted to escape on a motorcycle crashed into the web net, bike and all.
The front wheel was tangled dead, the entire motorcycle flipped a full circle in the air, and the rider was thrown back to the ground by the rebound force, struggling with a flush red face like a fly trapped in plastic wrap.
"Stop struggling, the more you struggle, the tighter it gets."
The man kept struggling, and the webbing bound him even tighter.
"Why won't you listen, you silly child."
Squatting on the rooftop, Chen Mo scanned all the sealed entrances and exits below, confirming that no fish had slipped through the net. Then, he glanced in the direction of the cockpit. The engine hadn't been turned off; the Batmobile sat quietly in the shadow of the shipping containers like a crouching giant beast.
Intense gunfire suddenly erupted from the direction of the stronghold. It wasn't aimed at him--it was inside. Batman had already gone in.
Chen Mo flipped down from the roof, moving rapidly along the alley walls. Webbing sprayed continuously from his fingertips, weaving one blockading line after another behind him. His mouth didn't stop, his voice pressed very low so only he could hear it.
"Three, four. The perimeter is completely sealed off, not even a fly can get out."
A few muffled thuds echoed from deep within the stronghold, followed by the sound of shattering glass.
Immediately after, a second-story window was smashed open from the inside. A False Face Society member leaned half his body out, clutching a submachine gun and spraying wildly at the outside.
Bullets hit the brick wall across the alley, sending debris flying. Chen Mo sidestepped to dodge, throwing out a strand of webbing with a backhand flick to stick onto the gun barrel, then yanked hard. The submachine gun flew out of the man's grip into the air, where it was caught by a second strand of webbing and left dangling under the eaves.
"I already told you not to play with fire in the middle of the night. How are you guys one more stubborn than the next?"
He looked up at the broken window. There was no more movement inside. A moment later, Batman's figure walked out from the main entrance of the stronghold. He was dragging the last unconscious False Face Society member by the hand, setting the man down on the steps at the entrance with movements as crisp as unloading cargo.
Chen Mo hopped down from the roof, landing beside Batman. "Cleared out inside?"
Batman nodded.
Chen Mo scanned the few crates of smuggled goods piled up at the entrance of the stronghold that hadn't been loaded onto the trucks yet, then looked at the alleys sealed by webbing. All the entrances and exits remained blocked; no one had escaped.
"How about your side?"
"Not a single one ran, sir." Chen Mo brought his index and ring fingers together, brushing his fingertips past his temple in a reporting gesture.
Standing on the steps of the stronghold's entrance, Batman swept his gaze over the alleys blocked by webbing, the submachine gun hanging under the eaves, and the False Face Society member on the ground who was still bound by webbing and unable to move.
"There are still people inside."
"Uh... I think I see them."