As you wish, a supervillain

When Chen Mo put Bruce into the cardboard box, he moved as gently as if he were cradling a nuclear bomb that could go off at any moment.

The little mutt with the broken hind leg huddled in the corner, watching him with watery eyes, neither barking nor struggling.

"Good boy. If you dare start howling like a wolf at two in the morning, I'll give you to the Maroni gang downstairs for a midnight snack."

Muttering, he pulled a pile of bottles and jars from inside his clothes.

Povidone-iodine, gauze, pet anti-inflammatory medicine-things he had traded his last scrap of conscience and a few crumpled bills for just before the pharmacy closed.

He had checked Gotham's veterinary hospital prices on his phone: fifty dollars for a basic examination, two hundred minimum to set and splint a bone, and six hundred gone just for an X-ray.

"Six hundred dollars?" Chen Mo had sneered at his phone screen. "How many pounds of ribs would that buy? Enough to buy a dog's life, surely?"

Actually, it was enough to buy a human life, too, and human lives generally weren't worth that much.

Chen Mo cursed as he deftly secured Bruce's broken leg with webbing.

He wasn't practiced at immobilizing dog legs, but how could he not be practiced at immobilizing human legs?

Webbing worked better than plaster: lightweight, breathable, and able to break down on its own after a few days.

After wrapping the gauze, he poured a little of the cheapest puppy food into a chipped bowl.

"Make it last. That stuff costs me fifteen bucks a bag. Everything we're worth right now would only buy a hundred bags."

Bruce leaned over and licked it, the tip of his tail giving a little wag.

Watching that wagging tail, Chen Mo sighed inwardly.

He hadn't picked up a dog. He had picked up a money shredder.

But the puppy really was adorable.

Chen Mo stayed crouched there admiring his puppy a little longer before getting up and walking over to the secondhand sewing machine. Its creaking was loud enough to sound like renovation work.

He tossed aside the old shirt he had worn to tatters over the past two days and changed into the secondhand work pants he had just found, which had cost less than ten dollars in total.

They had a musty smell that wouldn't go away, but at least they were clean.

He sat at the desk and spread out his drawing paper. He was an art student-before transmigrating, and afterward, too.

Gotham's nights belonged to Spider-Man, but during Gotham's days, he had to survive on this pen.

His comic pages weren't finished yet. They were next month's rent and Bruce's ribs.

He had only just finished six panels.

Outside the window, the Bat-Signal was flashing in the clouds again.

Chen Mo stared at the light for two seconds.

"Running a light that bright every day-doesn't anyone care about the electric bill?"

He quickly changed back into his suit, put on his mask, and climbed out through the vent.

At the Gotham docks in the early hours, the fog was so thick it looked as though someone had overturned a bucket of milk out at sea.

Crane booms loomed in and out of the fog, shipping containers formed uneven mountains of steel, and the lights, wrapped in mist, became blurry orange halos.

The air smelled of machine oil, sea salt, and rotting wooden crates.

Chen Mo crouched on the edge of a suspended shipping container, one leg dangling, playing cat's cradle with webbing on the crane's crossbeam.

He was waiting.

Surely no one would shine the Bat-Signal for no reason just to send him running around?

Besides, it was too quiet here-quiet enough to make his skin crawl.

Then Chen Mo heard a sound.

A muffled whimper squeezed from the depths of a throat after something had been crushed.

A low roar followed, a sound that belonged not to a human but to some predator capable of tearing humans apart like disposable supplies.

Chen Mo's Spider-Sense jolted, a needlelike sting shooting from the back of his head all the way to his tailbone.

He flipped off the edge of the container.

In the fog, an enormous figure had a dockworker pinned against the side of a shipping container.

The worker's feet dangled at least half a meter above the ground.

The hand around his throat, if it could still be called a hand, was covered in dark green scales, with knuckles as thick as wrenches and five black claws at its fingertips, each capable of gouging a furrow in concrete.

The worker's face had turned purple, his struggles growing weaker.

Chen Mo adjusted his posture in midair, brought his feet together, and hurtled into the fog like a torpedo.

He slammed into Killer Croc's back, driving with his knees and elbows at once, using gravitational acceleration to channel his full weight into the weakest point of his opponent's spine, where the neck met the upper back.

There was a dull impact. Killer Croc swayed, and his grip on the worker loosened.

The worker fell to the ground, coughed violently, then scrambled toward the warehouse.

Killer Croc turned around.

His golden, slit-pupiled eyes shone coldly in the fog, his pupils narrowing to slits.

A low growl rumbled from his throat.

"Spider, go away. I'm looking for the Bat..."

Chen Mo hadn't landed.

The instant Killer Croc turned, webbing from his right hand stuck to a crane boom off to the side, pulling him sideways.

He spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees in midair, his left leg gathering strength through the rotation, then used the speed of the web's pull to drive his foot straight into Killer Croc's face.

"Seriously? Aren't I cuter than the Bat? You dislike me that much?"

It felt like stepping on a slab of granite. But the impact forced Killer Croc half a step back, and a rank breath blasted from his nostrils.

Chen Mo used the recoil to spring back onto the crane, crouching on the crossbeam.

"Hey, big guy." He looked down. "Is there no skincare product left in Gotham that can save you? That dead skin's thick enough to patch up the Great Wall."

Killer Croc looked up, his slit pupils narrowing to lines.

"I'm going to chew up every bone in your body."

Staring at that crocodile face, Chen Mo had a thought.

Sure enough, every Spider-Man had his own Lizard.

"Hello, lizard man. Did some genetic experiment do this to you, too? Or did you grow up ugly all naturally?"

Killer Croc let out a furious roar that made Chen Mo's ears ache.

"I'm a damn crocodile! You're the lizard!"

He stamped, splitting the concrete with a crack. His massive body came barreling forward like an out-of-control truck.

Chen Mo sprang off the crane and backflipped onto a container, crouching at its edge.

"Look at you getting worked up. Crocodile, lizard-you're all cold-blooded reptiles anyway. Too bad I can't be a lizard. I'm a spider."

Killer Croc turned, hooked his claws over the container's edge, and hauled himself up.

Standing two and a half meters tall atop the container, his dark green scales gleamed cold and wet under the fog lights. He spread his claws and pounced like a true beast attacking its prey.

Chen Mo didn't retreat.

The instant Killer Croc lunged, he pushed off the container's roof with his right foot and dashed diagonally forward to the left.

He kept his body low, sliding out almost flush with the surface.

Killer Croc's right claw swept across his back, its tips missing his spine by only two centimeters.

The sting of Spider-Sense screamed inside his head, but he had already calculated the distance.

He slid behind Killer Croc's flank, planted his left hand, and kicked up into a handstand, whipping his right leg down onto the back of Killer Croc's head.

Thud.

A muffled sound, like an iron bar striking a sack full of sand.

Killer Croc's head dipped forward, and the scales on his neck finally showed a slight, visible deformation.

Chen Mo used the recoil from his handstand to spring into the air, flipped twice, and landed steadily on the container's edge three meters away, crouching with one hand braced against the surface.

"Didn't you just say you were going to chew up my bones?" He tilted his head. "How come you can't even touch me? Why don't you shave down those calluses on your face first, so your eyes can at least see properly?"

Killer Croc flew into a rage.

"I'll crush you! Little bug!"

He jumped off the container and slammed into the ground, sending a ring of broken stones flying around his feet, then charged straight in.

Every punch that struck a container left a deep crater, the sheet metal caving in as though struck by a massive hammer.

"Uh-oh. Still, one correction: spiders aren't insects..."

Chen Mo bounded between the containers, each step landing mere fractions of a second before the other's fists came down.

His webbing stuck to a container behind Killer Croc, pulled taut, and rebounded to accelerate him.

Like a stone fired from a slingshot, Chen Mo brought his knees together, curled into a cannonball, and slammed into Killer Croc's chest.

The impact echoed through the docks.

Killer Croc staggered back two steps, a hairline crack appearing in the scales on his chest, seeping a trace of dark liquid.

Chen Mo bounced away, landed, and settled into a crouch.

His knees were tingling. The recoil from that blow had shaken him badly, too.

Killer Croc looked down at the crack in his chest, and at last, something other than anger flashed through his slit pupils.

"How could you break my scales..."

"Surprised?"

Chen Mo stood and rolled his ankles. "So am I. Look, your hide's so thick I've hurt my hands hitting you. Let's make a deal. You go check yourself into Blackgate Penitentiary, and I save some effort while you save on medical bills. How about it?"

Killer Croc answered with action.

He spun abruptly, his thick crocodile tail sweeping toward Chen Mo with a whistle through the air.

Chen Mo didn't dodge.

He stuck webbing to the crane's crossbeam and launched himself straight up, stretching his whole body out in midair like a fully drawn bow.

The tail swept beneath his feet, the wind pressure blowing even the hair beneath his mask backward.

Then he tightened his abdomen, turned his wrist, adjusted his angle, and used the webbing's recoil to plunge straight down from above.

Elbow first, body behind it, he concentrated all his strength into the point of his elbow, aiming at the crown of Killer Croc's skull.

Bang.

The blow drove Killer Croc down onto one knee.

The ground sank in a ring around him. The scales atop his skull made faint cracking sounds.

Chen Mo sprang away and landed, failing to find his footing.

His knees buckled and he swayed, forcing him to brace a hand against the container beside him.

That series of high-intensity leaps and spins, from the handstand whip kick to the torpedo strike to the vertical elbow drop, had depended entirely on the pull of his webbing and his body's explosive power.

The spider genes were strengthening his muscles and endurance, but even his enhanced body couldn't withstand being pushed beyond its limits over and over.

Still not strong enough.

System, I'm talking to you!

Killer Croc got to his feet.

His jaws opened wide, exposing a mouthful of crooked fangs.

A thoroughly enraged roar rolled from his throat. He charged like a cannonball, his entire body leaving the ground as more than two hundred pounds of scales and muscle came hurtling toward Chen Mo.

Chen Mo wanted to dodge.

His Spider-Sense was screaming, but he couldn't determine a direction.

Killer Croc's enormous body blocked every angle of escape along his path.

Chen Mo crossed his arms over his chest.

The titanium-alloy plates faced Killer Croc's claws head-on.

The enormous impact slammed into him, and he heard his ribs groan. They probably hadn't broken yet, but they weren't far from it.

He was driven back a meter, his feet dragging two deep tracks through the ground.

One titanium-alloy plate dented inward, and the freshly sewn seam at his shoulder burst open.

The stitches unraveled and the nylon curled back, exposing the still-red skin beneath.

That tear would cost at least fifty dollars to mend.

His money!

Killer Croc raised his claws, preparing for a second lunge.

Chen Mo gave him no chance.

He shot two strands of webbing onto the container behind Killer Croc and planted both feet against his opponent's chest, using it to spring away. Like a spring compressed to its limit and suddenly released, he shot outward, flipped once in midair, and fired webbing from his left hand onto the steel frame at the top of the crane.

He didn't linger to fight. If this went on, his ribs would break, his suit would be ruined, and Bruce really would have nothing but compressed biscuits to eat tonight.

Behind him came Killer Croc's roars and the crash of shipping containers being smashed apart.

He didn't look back.

This wasn't running away.

The spider had only shown up there to save the poor worker.

He had saved him! He had bought enough time!

This was called bowing out after a job well done.

When Chen Mo returned to the attic, he crawled inside.

He crawled inside every time, of course, but there were different kinds of crawling.

Chen Mo collapsed onto the battered couch, without even the strength to remove his mask.

"Bruce..."

Chen Mo called out in a muffled voice. The puppy poked his head out of the cardboard box and looked at this big red-and-blue spider covered in dirt.

With trembling hands, Chen Mo peeled off his suit.

A broad patch over his ribs was bruised blue and purple, with faint dark red in the middle, and he poured alcohol directly onto the bruise.

"Hiss-hah!"

Chen Mo gritted his teeth, tears nearly spilling from his eyes. The spider genes were frantically repairing his body, and the itching that came from deep between his bones was more torturous than the pain.

"See that, Bruce?" Chen Mo pointed at his ribs, then at the puppy's short legs. "We match now. But I'll definitely heal faster than you, because I have spider powers."

The puppy wagged his tail, seemingly mocking his sorry state.

Chen Mo lay slumped on the couch, staring at the leak in the ceiling.

His suit was torn, his ribs were cracked, and he still had to set aside some of the money left in his pocket to repair the suit.

And that hulking guy covered in crocodile skin was still hanging around the docks.

Chen Mo closed his eyes and replayed every one of Killer Croc's moves in his head. His bite force was astonishing, his back was heavily armored, and he was immensely strong, but he turned rather slowly and left an obvious opening as he recovered after each attack.

His tail sweep was his greatest weapon, and also his most ingrained habit. Before every sweep, he would always glance briefly in the opposite direction first.

He suddenly remembered a segment he had seen on Animal World.

Didn't crocodiles have some fatal weakness? The temples, on either side of the skull, where the temporalis muscles attached. The armor on their backs was extremely thick, but their bellies were relatively soft.

Wrapping bandages around their mouths worked better than anything else.

Chen Mo rolled over and reached for the comic pages on the table, enduring the pain.

"Once I have money, the first thing I'm doing is buying a few tons of explosives and blasting that big lizard into chargrilled crocodile steaks."

He picked up his pen and furiously drew an abstract chibi crocodile face on the paper.

Since my fists aren't hard enough, I'll have to use my brain.

No wonder Batman liked arranging fights.