"Long Island-wide blackout..."
On a Manhattan skyscraper rooftop, Schiller looked down at the message on his phone screen and muttered to himself. He took out a pair of binoculars and looked toward Long Island, but it was too far away; he could only vaguely make out the coastline.
Besides the resorts hidden in the quiet, that area also had a famous bar district. Neon lights flickered through the night, and even from Manhattan, one could feel the boiling hormones, deafening music, and alcohol-fueled exhilaration.
Schiller lowered the binoculars and continued surveying Brooklyn and Queens. Before long, he spotted a swinging figure above the traffic.
Without hesitation, Schiller put away the binoculars, picked up his sniper rifle, aimed at the web strand glinting faintly gold beneath the streetlights, and pulled the trigger. Bang!
Tonight, Spider-Man fell from grace once again—literally.
Spider-Man, who had just grabbed that web, clearly had never considered that it might snap. He did not have time to fire the next strand before tumbling to the ground, rolling several times, and then getting to his feet looking thoroughly bedraggled.
Standing by the roadside, he looked around in confusion before remembering to return to where he had fallen. After searching carefully, he finally found a gleaming bullet head beneath a streetlamp.
A sniper bullet was thin and long, far too distinctive to mistake. After thinking back for a moment, Spider-Man looked in one direction. Unfortunately, skyscrapers rose one after another into the clouds, and he could see nothing from there.
Spider-Man instinctively extended an arm, intending to fire a web and swing away, but after pausing, he withdrew it. He ran to the roadside and waved. "TAXI!"
Fifteen minutes later, Spider-Man got out of the cab. Manhattan taxis were expensive enough to make his heart ache, and even in