Hello, Peter?

Chen Mo darted nimbly between the exposed brick joints where the plaster had peeled away, like an enormous gecko, then slipped lightly into the sealed-off attic.

He had discovered this place eighteen days ago.

The attic lay hidden on the top floor of an old apartment building, its entrance long since sealed with cement. Even the most seasoned local homeless people had no idea this hidden space existed.

But for a Spider-Man who could climb walls, none of that was a problem.

He climbed through the window and reached back to wedge the loose board firmly into place.

The room was thick with dust, and all the furniture was over a decade out of date, giving off a musty smell.

But it had a battered sofa with springs, and a roof to keep out the wind and rain.

And.

He could tap into the water pipes and electrical grid of the apartments downstairs!

For an undocumented boy barely in his teens, wandering Gotham's streets and unwilling to go down the wrong path, this was practically a five-star presidential suite.

Chen Mo plopped onto the sofa. Its springs let out a piercing shriek, jolting his backside painfully.

He had no time to bother with that and hurriedly pulled a paper package from inside his clothes.

Before he even opened it, the smell of cheap grease wafted into his nose.

Inside were two cheeseburgers.

And a slightly crushed carton of fries.

These were the "spoils" of his night patrol.

Half an hour earlier, some unlucky bastard who had just robbed a convenience store had run into him in an alley.

The robber had been carrying a late-night meal he had just bought. Before he could take a single bite, Chen Mo had pinned him to the ground with a textbook shoulder throw.

At the time, Chen Mo had dodged the man's flailing arms while rambling, "Hey, buddy, calm down. Look, you rob a convenience store, I stop you from robbing the convenience store. That's all standard procedure. But robbing it after you've already bought your midnight snack? That's a little unprofessional. Do you know how slowly the Gotham Police Department responds? You could've finished eating before robbing it, or robbed it before eating. You've got the order wrong, buddy. The order's wrong."

His rambling had left the robber questioning his life. The man had scrambled away without even daring to ask for his burgers back.

Of course!

If you ran into a masked freak in Gotham who babbled nonstop, seemed mentally unstable, had monstrous strength, and could climb walls, wouldn't you run?

The system had said nothing at the time.

As long as he hadn't stolen it, the system generally turned a blind eye to this sort of "ownerless" food.

Chen Mo even suspected that the system thought he was about to starve to death too, and had decided to cut him some slack.

He took a huge bite of his burger. The cold cheese and hard, dry bread tasted better to him than a full imperial banquet.

As he chewed, Chen Mo sifted through the original owner's jumbled memories.

The original owner's father had been called Old Ma.

Back home in China, he had been a reasonably well-off member of the middle class. Then, for some unfathomable reason, he had insisted on bringing the original owner along to pursue the so-called "American dream."

Pursuing a dream was one thing, but the old man just had to do things differently and insist on smuggling the original owner into the country.

As a result, they had barely landed in Gotham, before even seeing the Statue of Liberty, when they stumbled straight into a gang shootout.

Old Ma had become a sacrifice to the "American dream" on the spot.

The original owner had escaped the docks alone, wandered Gotham's streets for a few days, and finally starved to death beside a trash can.

Then Chen Mo had arrived, with a "Spider-Man Roleplaying System" thrown in.

The original owner's name had been Peter. His father's surname had originally been Ma, but he had changed it to Parker after setting out to pursue his dream.

Chen Mo had had two options at the time.

One: go by Peter Parker, a name that sounded like it would bring doom to his family, his friends, and himself.

Two: go by Ma Peter.

"Ma Peter."

Points deducted for the pun!

Chen Mo swallowed the last bite of his burger and wiped his mouth.

He had made up his mind back then. Peter Parker, Ma Peter-screw them all.

He was already undocumented. Why should he care about any of that?

His name was Chen Mo.

Chen ❤ as in "silent," Mo as in "silent."

In this city crawling with lunatics, talking less and exploiting more bugs was the key to survival.

Yes, exactly. Talk less.

Just then, a pale blue, translucent interface suddenly popped up on his retina.

[Ding! Stage one roleplaying mission complete.]

[Current character compatibility: 5%]

[Distributing stage reward...]

Chen Mo perked up.

After half a month of hard work, he was finally getting a return.

He had thought the system might reward him with some dollars, or perhaps a nanotech suit he wouldn't have to wash by hand.

Instead, a line of text appeared on the system interface:

[Ability unlocked: organic wrist webbing.]

Chen Mo froze for a moment.

Instinctively, he raised his right hand and examined his wrist.

Considering that most versions of Spider-Man made their own webbing.

Chen Mo had already braced himself to rummage through trash heaps for parts and build his own web-shooters.

Instead, the system had simply given him a genetic mutation.

"Thank goodness. That saves me some money on materials."

Chen Mo muttered to himself.

If he really had to obtain chemical reagents and machinery by proper, lawful means, he figured he would have to perform on Gotham's streets until the year after next.

Following the instinct that had suddenly appeared in his mind, he pressed his middle and ring fingers together and pushed hard, aiming toward the corner.

Pfft.

A faint sound rang out.

A white strand shot from his wrist, sticking precisely to the battered wardrobe some distance away.

Curious, Chen Mo reached out and tugged on it.

That tug made his expression freeze.

The strand of webbing was limp, like an overcooked noodle. With the slightest force, it snapped.

The broken end even had an uncanny translucence to it, looking almost... feeble.

"I'm so light even my webbing can't carry me now. Diet successful, yay."

Still running his mouth, Chen Mo tried firing a few more shots.

Each was worse than the last.

The final shot wilted in midair before traveling even two meters, like a puddle of glue that hadn't set.

[System notice: due to the host's prolonged malnutrition and severely insufficient biological protein reserves, current web strength is only 0.5% of normal.]

"Breaking-in period. Right, it's not malnutrition. It's a breaking-in period."

Chen Mo stared at the smear of white slime remaining on his wrist and fell into a long silence.

After remaining silent for a while, Chen Mo punched the air.

This system was far too realistic.

Without money for food, even the threads he shot were brittle.

He looked at his hands, feeling the faint warmth those burgers had brought to his stomach.

Chen Mo sighed and lay down on the battered sofa.

Outside the window, Gotham's night sky remained thick with dark clouds. A shrill police siren or two occasionally sounded in the distance.

Rolling over amid the creaking springs, Chen Mo drifted into a deep sleep.

In his dream, he was sitting aboard Stark's private jet, holding a black card with no spending limit and furiously demolishing a table laden with an imperial feast.

Meanwhile, Batman crouched beside him, handing him tissues and saying:

"Chen Mo, eat more. Gotham's future is counting on you."

Chen Mo laughed aloud in his sleep.