So, what happened over the five days? Actually, it's hard to list everything off the top of my head, but first and foremost, I should clarify what I spent the forty bucks I "borrowed" from the guard on the pier. Don't be surprised, but it all went on clothes and food. Yes, yes, don't look at me like that.
Not wanting to put it off, I quickly found a suitable second-hand store and got dressed to size by morning. Actually, the remaining four dollars went toward a cup of coffee and two awful hot dogs, whose sausages were made of paper, no doubt. American street food is tasty right up until the moment you start thinking about what exactly you're chewing.
Nevertheless, food and clothes are good, but completely empty pockets and no documents are bad, so I had to think. I'd been in similar situations before, especially as a teenager, but back then I always had Mike with me, and surviving on the streets is much easier together. Now I was alone, so I had to take into account all the possible risks associated with solitude.
First, I decided to take advantage of the moment and wait out the first daylight somewhere. Since walking the streets in broad daylight still seemed like a very dubious idea to me, night should become my best friend. That's why I used what New York had in abundance: an extremely convenient fire escape that led me straight to the roof of a four-story red-brick apartment building. Once up there, I rolled up the guard's clothes into a bundle and lay down, using that bundle as a pillow. Not luxurious, of course, but it'll do. The motto of my life is "it's been worse," so I looked optimistically not only toward tomorrow but also today.
The plan was as simple as could be: I had to become a very, very poor Batman. You know, what's the difference between a rich Batman and a poor Batman? They both beat up people with questionable records, but the second one also robs them. As I already said, my range of opportunities is quite specific, and I'm not planning to change yet.
What changes can we even talk about after everything that's happened to me? Here, it's about surviving and staying free, and what methods I'll have to use for that is a completely different question. For now, I decided to do what I do best, and so I spent the whole day on the roof waiting for night. However, rest was indeed necessary for me: not counting all the stress I experienced in the lab, the massacre, and the long swim, the finishing blow was the cup of hot coffee and two hot dogs.
Relaxing, I even dozed off a couple of times, hiding behind the ventilation pipes, which ultimately helped me throw off my schedule. After all, the upcoming nights were sure to be sleepless, so a distorted sleep and wake cycle would definitely come in handy. In addition, I decided to test the limits of my acquired powers anyway, and I definitely wasn't disappointed.
The ceiling of my chemistry knowledge was formulas for explosives and some other details related to my main activity in the previous world, so I couldn't answer the question of what exactly changed in my body after a few hours in the form of a giant lizard. All I could do was understand the obvious consequences, since the non-obvious ones hadn't come up yet.
So, in order: strength, endurance, speed. I could effortlessly jump from the roof of one house to another without worrying about possible consequences. My body responded to signals sent by the brain with such speed and ease, as if I'd taken some stimulant. On the other hand, the serum could be called a stimulant, right? Trying to create a cure for all diseases, Oscorp created the world's best fast-acting doping. All that's left is to supply the Olympic team with it, and then Oscorp will become a sports organization too. Regeneration remained in question—after all, the bones fused even before the final experiment—but I decided not to tempt fate and just wait for a suitable occasion to know for sure.
Having spent the entire first day on sleep, dreams of a better future, and similar nonsense, I got down to business as soon as the sun disappeared below the horizon and the first streetlights lit up. The sunset turned out to be surprisingly late, and the metropolis wasn't conducive to "working in the dark," but Hell's Kitchen is a special place, no matter how you look at it. Even I, far from the eastern American coast, had heard plenty about what happens here as soon as the city falls asleep.
Honestly, at first I assumed that finding suitable losers would take at least a couple of hours, but I was wrong, because while jumping across the roofs of identical houses, I quickly stumbled upon a group of people who seemed to have crawled out of a caricature captioned "the lowest link in organized street crime."
Interestingly, in reality... More precisely, in normal reality, is Hell's Kitchen arranged so that every three or four houses, shady thugs gather who are just begging for a shake-up? If so, I don't envy New Yorkers, but it's worth allowing that such blatant sloppiness is characteristic of comics, after all, heroes need someone to hone their skills on.
The bandits looked as if they were going to rob at least a kindergarten, and at most a roadside laundromat. They spoke broken English, bats in hand... However, there were only three of them, so I could try to do something without resorting to complex methods. In addition, I had no serious weapons except for a relatively sturdy rusty pipe I found on the roof. It was about sixty centimeters long, but still quite heavy, so I had to hit carefully.
Adjusting my sweatshirt, I pulled the hood over my head and tied it so that my face couldn't be seen, then slowly began descending the fire escape. Slowly—literally at a snail's pace, so the process dragged on for several minutes. Already on the way, I regretted not taking cheap sunglasses along with the clothes, of which there were plenty in the second-hand store, but the hot dog and coffee seemed like a much more reasonable choice then.
The potential criminals I chose as targets didn't notice at all that twenty meters away from them, a teenager in black clothes silently landed on the ground. I probably wouldn't have noticed either. However, now it didn't matter, because I needed to announce myself.
I managed to tuck the pipe under my sweatshirt so that I could quickly grab it with my right hand, but for that, I needed the right moment. Hunching my shoulders and bending my back, I shoved my left hand into the pocket of my jeans and slowly shuffled toward the local punks, swaying slightly.
"Ha-ha, you've wandered into the wrong place!" That reckless statement was followed by laughter. Oh, you're the ones who wandered into the wrong place, guys...
Before even reaching them, I demonstratively jerked, hearing one of them address me in broken English.
"Hey, you hear?!" he repeated, pushing off the wall. "Or are you deaf?!"
The hood limited visibility, and I kept my head bowed so that my face couldn't be seen, but his movements suddenly became inexplicably clear to me, as paradoxical as that sounds. Every step, every breath I heard and felt as if watching him through glass. The heightened senses were reined in just in time, because he stopped and turned to his buddies.
"He's high," the guy laughed, pointing at me, "barely standing on his feet!"
Naturally, idiot, I even hunched over on purpose so you'd feel safe next to me. Apparently, his observations led to the others becoming interested in me too. Swaying slightly, I tried to turn around as soon as the three guys lined up in a row, but the first one suddenly jumped at me and shoved, aiming for the neck but hitting the shoulder.
"Get out of here, idiot," he hissed as I clumsily staggered toward the wall on purpose. "Heard of Hammerhead? He has nothing against..."
I have no idea who he was babbling about or what he was going to say. Freeing my left hand, I pushed off the brick wall, simultaneously pulling out from under my sweatshirt the pipe hidden there, which reeked terribly of some musty water. Gripping it tightly, I knocked out the jerk who was closest to me with one blow, then immediately dashed toward the pair standing a couple of meters behind him.
Apparently, they could use medical help, but they definitely stayed alive. I hit so that the blow wouldn't accidentally be fatal—after all, it's too early for killings. Only... a dent appeared on the pipe, matching the imprint of my palm. And the nails on my fingers lengthened and thickened, as if I was starting to turn into a lizard again. An alarming signal, very alarming. If they've turned me into a lizard-like mini-Hulk, that's a huge problem, because emotionlessness and control are definitely not about me. Judging by the gradually disappearing claws turning into ordinary human nails, things are bad for me. Better than they could be, but still bad.
Rolling up my sleeves, I approached the most arrogant representative of this rabble, and already five minutes later, I climbed back onto the roof via the fire escape, holding in one hand the guard's jacket turned into a bag. Once up, I grabbed the loot obtained in the not very fair fight, gripped the pipe tightly—which I decided not to leave in the alley—and returned to the roof of the very house where I'd spent the whole day.
The first outing ended in success, and I didn't even need to kill anyone to get weapons. A Beretta 92, two spare magazines, two bats, brass knuckles, two knives... Damn, with such a set of junk, they'd only go to a scrap yard, but certainly not to racketeering the neighborhood. On the other hand, I still don't know who they are or what role they're assigned in their gang's hierarchy, and only one of them had documents. I took them just in case; you never know.
Actually, the most valuable thing in the whole bag wasn't the weapons but the money. After all, in the near future, I wasn't planning to kill anyone with firearms, but money was needed right here and now. Eight hundred ninety dollars for three—that's good, very good. Better than it could have been, since they looked like complete idiots. With such a safety net, the prospects suddenly became much brighter, and I could finally think not only about life underground but also about acquiring documents.
To pass the hours in the apartment usefully, I bought a phone and a laptop, after which, with great difficulty but still, I got a fake SIM card in some musty little shop. Nothing special, the minimal set for comfortable internet use. Considering how little I knew about comics and, consequently, this whole world, I needed to compare some guesses with reality. And I was going to start with Curt Connors.