Chapter 4: Double-Cross Triple-Cross
Crash!
The moment Black Cat finished speaking, her silent subordinates uniformly drew pistols and aimed them at Joseph and his thugs.
At the same instant they drew their weapons, Batman's figure slowly descended from the gantry crane.
He simply couldn't swing on webbing with all those twisting contortions like Peter did. Not because he lacked the skill, but because it was too ostentatious and awkward for him.
But without a grappling gun, the web shooters could still substitute for most functions, and they worked quite well.
Using the web shooters, Batman approached both gang groups without alerting anyone.
"You misunderstand, Black Cat." Joseph had seven or eight pistols pointed at him, but he didn't look panicked. "Look, we came empty-handed without carrying any weapons. Doesn't that demonstrate my sincerity?"
He spread his hands, letting Black Cat clearly see he wasn't holding a gun.
"Your sincerity is certainly sufficient. But you kept calling me 'Miss Black Cat' before, and now it's changed to just 'Black Cat.'"
"I'm very unhappy. Will you let me fire a shot?"
Black Cat's sweet smile vanished instantly. She disengaged the safety and prepared to pull the trigger.
"I'll use your name to offend all of New York's underground forces, Kingpin. This is the first step of my revenge," Black Cat murmured in a voice only she could hear.
A breeze blew past. The air had somehow become filled with a fishy stench. Black Cat's subordinates looked around, unsure where this strange odor came from.
Joseph's people obviously smelled the intense fishy odor too. But compared to Black Cat's confusion, Joseph looked confident:
"Black Cat, want to play double-cross like in the movies? Good thing I specifically hired an adjudicator for tonight's transaction... Squid-Man!"
As his words fell, the ground beside them suddenly ruptured. A jet of sewage water sprayed out, as if an underground pipe had burst, hitting Joseph square in the face.
"Damn it!" Joseph called out in annoyance.
Black Cat took a deep breath, watching helplessly as a squid tentacle emerged from the sewage-soaked earth.
Tentacle after tentacle emerged. Soon a squid with a greenish-blue body roughly the size of an adult human burst from the ground, slowly standing upright supported by two tentacles.
Four tentacles mimicked limbs while the remaining four waved menacingly behind. This terrifying humanoid squid appeared before everyone's eyes.
Bang!
Black Cat fired a bullet, but it deflected off Squid-Man's body without causing any real damage, only stopping his advancing steps.
"Aim for this thing's eyes."
No one behind her responded, while Joseph's thugs showed signs of fear.
Black Cat knew her subordinates' expressions couldn't be much better facing a squid-man beyond normal human comprehension. She turned her face to reissue the order.
Her peripheral vision swept behind her. Black Cat couldn't help feeling a chill down her spine, her hair standing on end.
Not a single person stood behind her. The subordinates who'd been silently aiming at Joseph just seconds ago had collectively vanished.
The pitch-black abandoned shipyard seemed like an abyss that had silently swallowed them completely.
"No, that's not right. Squid-Man was clearly hired by Joseph, yet their expressions just now showed fear... what were they afraid of?"
Black Cat recalled the confused yet terrified expressions on those thugs' faces, knowing events had exceeded her expectations.
No time to think further. A black shadow was already rushing toward her from a distance. At the critical moment, Black Cat pulled the trigger, firing several shots.
Bang! bang!
Unfortunately, no sound of bullets hitting. Black Cat stopped wasting ammunition, quickly turning her gun toward Joseph and firing once.
She knew she couldn't escape, but before dying, she needed to take someone down with her.
Joseph, the recently notorious New York assassin famous for his brutal methods, often using a hammer to literally smash enemies' heads to pieces.
Whether from disgust for this psychotic killer or using Kingpin's name to offend New York's underground forces, Black Cat felt no psychological pressure firing this shot.
With Black Cat's bullet precisely striking his forehead, he collapsed quite neatly to the ground, without any time to feel psychological pressure.
Headshot. Just as Black Cat searched for that invisible, intangible eerie shadow, tremendous force struck her wrist.
The pistol fell. Black Cat was tightly bound by the black shadow and launched into the air, the snow-white peaks threatening to burst from her deep-V leather outfit compressed into two thick snow cakes.
In panic she tried to grab the black shadow, but her hands were firmly locked. She could only use her elastic, slender legs to cross and wrap around whoever had brought her into the air.
Hiss!
An extremely subtle sound. Then Black Cat discovered herself tightly bound and suspended in midair, the briefcase full of cash snatched from her hands. That black shadow had already disappeared.
Joseph had been hit by the bullet and collapsed. His subordinates immediately panicked. One stepped forward to check, then shouted:
"Boss is still breathing! He can be saved!"
Several thugs swarmed forward, hoisted Joseph up, and fled without a trace, not even bothering with the guns in the wooden crates they'd intended to purchase.
Squid-Man, hired by Joseph to double-cross and eliminate Black Cat's group, stood frozen in place. The situation had changed too quickly. He had no idea what had actually happened.
But Squid-Man had clearly witnessed Black Cat's subordinates mysteriously disappearing one after another. Now he raised his eyes to look around. The shipyard's massive industrial equipment had all transformed into shadows, as if something even more terrifying than himself might emerge at any moment.
As a monster in ordinary people's eyes, Squid-Man wasn't afraid of other potentially existing monsters. But this unknown presence still made his heart race with anxiety.
Especially when Squid-Man tried to move his feet only to discover that somehow, invisible chains seemed to have firmly bound him.
Fortunately, Squid-Man lived up to his name. He possessed virtually all squid characteristics, including a slippery body.
So he struggled to lift his feet to break free from that invisible restraint, and succeeded thanks to his slick body.
Joseph had only hired him as muscle. Now that thug's own life was in danger.
Between fighting and fleeing, Squid-Man chose the latter without hesitation.
"I need to get back to the sewers... no, something's charging at me!"
Just as he was about to dive into the sewage pipe, his peripheral vision caught a black shadow diving toward him from above.
At the critical moment, bodily instinct replaced thought. Squid-Man tilted his neck back to expose the funnel beneath the organ squids use to spray ink.
Splat!
A large mass of thick black ink sprayed out. Squid-Man didn't even look back, breaking into a run that didn't stop until he reached the outside of the abandoned shipyard, as if slowing down even slightly meant death.
"Holy shit! What the hell is that?"
A couple fucking while taking selfies with their phone on the street corner couldn't help exclaiming loudly at the sight of Squid-Man.
Squid-Man glanced at them, quickly rushing toward the couple... or rather, toward the sewer cover beside them. He yanked it up forcefully and dove in, leaving the clueless couple standing there.
"Did, did you get that on camera?" the woman stammered to her boyfriend.
"Got it... but who's going to believe we actually saw a humanoid squid?"
"Idiot! Sell the photo to the Daily Bugle, we might make a fortune!"
The man and woman pulled up their pants and left jubilantly, completely failing to notice that from the shadows of the abandoned shipyard, Batman was staring intently at the sewer cover Squid-Man had entered.
He chose not to continue pursuit. The webbing from the web shooters could only briefly restrain the target. Squid-Man's slippery body could escape quite easily.
He needed to make some preparations beforehand. But before that, Batman had to deal with the gang members he'd bound with webbing and suspended in various locations throughout the abandoned shipyard.