The bat began his analysis in the Batcave

Wayne Manor, the Batcave.

The main screen glowed a cold blue, making Bruce Wayne's jaw look expensive and very difficult to negotiate with.

He was still wearing the Batsuit, his cape trailing from the chair back to the floor.

Off the clock, and still in his work clothes.

Hard to understand, but Gotham's richest man's peculiar lifestyle deserved respect.

The screen was playing surveillance footage from the East End slums over the past forty-eight hours.

Alfred approached from the lift, carrying a tray. There was no late-night snack on it, just a stack of aerial photographs arranged chronologically.

"Master Bruce, the review data you requested."

Bruce reached out to take them, his gaze still fixed on the center of the screen.

The boy who called himself Spider-Man crouched atop a rusty water tower, scattering money by the handful. His posture showed no tactical training whatsoever. He looked exactly like a retiree feeding pigeons in a park.

The wind caught the hundred-dollar bills, sending them fluttering green into the shantytown.

Bruce dragged the progress bar and slowed the footage.

The first handful landed on the far side of a sheet-metal roof.

The second sailed over two clotheslines and fell into a back alley shared by several shacks.

The third scattered between garbage bins and a drainage ditch.

He tapped the keyboard twice, overlaying gang patrol routes on the footage in red. Every bill had avoided the red lines. Not one could be found on the open streets.

Alfred watched for a few seconds.

"Mr. Spider is quite particular about where his money goes."

"He was choosing the landing spots."

Bruce pulled up the nearby residents' daily movements.

The people living on the top floor would see the bills on the far side of the roof when they brought in their laundry. People getting up early to take out the trash could pick up the money in the back alley. Several homeless people with no fixed abode lived beside the drainage ditch, which also happened to be screened from the surveillance camera at the street entrance.

The money was scattered widely. People passed through every spot, and none were suitable places for gang members to linger.

Bruce brought up another projection.

If Chen Mo had handed out money door to door, he would have needed to stop at every entrance. Surveillance cameras would have recorded his route, and eyes on the street would have remembered where he had been.

By daybreak, the gangs would have followed that route, and no one who had taken money would have been able to hide.

Doors would have been kicked open, fingers broken, and the money would have ended up back in the gangs' hands.

Now, even the people picking up the money couldn't explain where it had come from.

Alfred returned an aerial photograph to the tray.

"He hid the recipients."

"Yes."

Bruce dragged the footage to the end.

Chen Mo pulled the last few bills from the bag and tucked them into his clothes. He had just raised his hand when it stopped in midair.

The timer advanced a full three seconds.

His shoulders were tense, his fingers straining too. Only after those three seconds did he climb down the wall, quickly disappearing behind the haphazard roofs of the shantytown.

Bruce brought all of Chen Mo's activity records from the past few days onto the screen.

The docks, the East End, the shantytown, a few back alleys that even police cars rarely entered.

The map of downtown was completely clean.

Given the strength his webbing had demonstrated so far, he would move faster among high-rises, and they would better suit the use of his strength. Yet he had stayed near the harbor the entire time.

Bruce closed the map, leaving only the final frame from the water tower.

More than four tons of strength was enough to rob people of a great many things.

Chen Mo had taken the bank robbers' money and kept only a few bills for himself. For every remaining bill, he had thought through an escape route for whoever picked it up.

The screen went dark.

"Master Bruce," Alfred asked, "your conclusion?"

Bruce looked at the darkened screen.

"He couldn't find another way."

Alfred waited for him to continue.

"Hospitals, police, relief organizations-all those roads end at the East End. Handing the money directly to them would only hurt them."

Bruce picked up an aerial photograph. In it, Chen Mo crouched at the edge of the water tower, the shantytown beneath his feet so chaotic that its roads were impossible to make out.

"So he paved one himself."

"A very precise road."

Bruce turned the photograph over. On the back were notes on the angle of each throw, the wind speed, and the landing spots.

"He calculated where every bill would land."

His fingertip paused over one spot.

"Only he left himself out of the calculations."

Was Jingwei Fills the Sea remembered to this day because anyone truly cared whether that sea had finally been filled?

Alfred was silent for a moment.

"Do you think he's kind?"

"The word 'kind' has been worn out in Gotham."

Bruce stood, his cape sliding off the chair back.

"All I can confirm is that no one was watching, and no one asked him to. He did it anyway."

"It sounds as though you already have your answer."

"There isn't enough evidence yet."

Alfred lowered his head and smiled.

That was a very Batman thing to say.

Bruce headed toward the changing room, then stopped again as he passed Alfred.

"Alfred."

"Master Bruce."

"He couldn't find another way."

Bruce continued walking.

Alfred watched the second person to do this and asked no further questions.

In the photograph on top of the tray, hundred-dollar bills were drifting down from the water tower.

Perhaps one day, this city really would see its first night without anyone firing a gun.

That day would come.