Dropping Black Cat and those seven or eight gang members at the door of a Manhattan precinct wasn't for nothing.
"If Black Cat doesn't escape and ends up held at the station, she has no record—she'll be released. Same for those men.
"If she's drowning in priors and rap sheets, she's not fit to work with me.
"And if she slips the chains and never even goes inside, I move to the next step."
Batman set down the Daily Bugle. The front-page shot of the Squid-Man was almost certainly taken by the couple from the night before.
"Judging from her micro-expressions when we spoke, she hasn't pinned all her hopes for revenge on me.
"So if she breaks free, she'll go report to Kingpin and recount what happened last night—that's how she earns his trust.
"As for the Squid-Man… after Joseph was shot he had zero will to fight and never engaged me at all, so neither Black Cat nor Kingpin has any real sense of my capabilities.
"But Kingpin will see me as an obstacle and try to remove me. Since I planted an I-beam weighing five tons in the ground right in front of Black Cat, he won't send rank-and-file to fight me—he'll hire the Squid-Man to kill me.
"Which suits me fine."
He folded the paper neatly aside, opened a wooden crate at his feet, and took out a revolver.
He set the revolver on the table and unstrapped the web-shooters from his wrists.
"I'm going to combine my old grapnel gun with the web-shooters."
Thinking as he worked, he stripped the revolver down. In seconds, a perfectly good sidearm became a pile of parts.
After dumping Black Cat's crew at the precinct last night, he'd returned to inventory the "spoils": five crates of weapons—revolvers to SMGs, five or six types in all, forty-two guns total—and a case of cash: $150,000.
The web-shooters needed a higher launch velocity; he could borrow the compressed-air principles from the grapnel gun's design. The high-tensile line the grapnel once used could be replaced with web fluid.
"The web's tack needs a major boost so it will stick fast to anything…"
Batman wasn't doctrinaire. The web-shooters were tools; refusing to use a tool would be pointless. The redesigned hybrid of grapnel and web-shooter would still be compact, worn at the wrists, and fired faster using compressed inert gas.
That was the design, anyway. He couldn't hand-build one in a single morning, not with the shipyard's equipment all rotted and rusted.
"The best inert gas is nitrogen. The old grapnel never had to worry about compressed volume, so there's a technique I've never used on it.
"But paired with the web-shooters—where I want small size and high kinetic output—it's a good choice.
"It's called a nitrogen gas spring."
He headed for the area by the Williamsburg Bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. There was a black-market workshop there that supplied bullets to a fair number of New York gangs. He planned to machine the nitrogen springs he needed on that line.
On the way, he detoured back to Peter Parker's rental in Lower Manhattan.
He'd watched daytime footage of Peter web-swinging across New York; to him, it was as showy as a red-cape Kryptonian flying laps around the globe. Even though Peter tried to drop the "Spider-Man" act and change back into the plaid-shirted, straight-laced STEM kid in secluded corners, Batman wasn't reassured. Someone with an agenda could still connect the dots and fix on "Peter Parker is Spider-Man."
He needed to hack the local police systems and purge any footage that could expose Spider-Man's trail—voice, accent, build—keeping only clips where no identifying features were discernible.
But first, he had to do one more thing: bag every piece of Spider-Man evidence in the apartment and stash it.
At minimum, the red-and-blue suit and the notebook packed with designs—from the suit to the web-shooters to "Spider-Sense." Either item could expose Batman—formerly Peter Parker.
He locked the door, drew the curtains, and quickly packed everything into Peter's backpack. Finished, he paused before the mirror.
High bridge of the nose, full lips, prominent cheekbones casting hard shadows, clean sideburn lines, brown-black hair brushed back—the archetypal white American look.
He realized Peter Parker even resembled him a little—just shorter. Only 5'10" (1.78 m), a full head below Bruce Wayne's 6'2" (1.88 m).
"Different body, and even familiar techniques will shift a little. I need to adapt fast."
He grabbed the backpack and moved to leave—machine the nitrogen springs at the illegal shop, then return to the shipyard to train—when a rapid knock derailed the plan.
"Peter? Peter!"
"Who is it?"
"Me. Harry."
Harry Osborn. According to ESU's records, he and Peter were practically inseparable—best of best friends. He was also Oscorp's golden boy, heir to a multinational biotech founded and run by his father, Norman Osborn.
That kind of money and tech was exactly the sort of thing Batman instinctively avoided. He hadn't inherited Peter's memories; around someone who'd been that close, he could slip up easily.
He'd accounted for this when he pulled Peter's file in Dr. Octavius's lab. The plan was simple: play sick.
And after a decade playing a rakish billionaire without ever being unmasked as Batman, his acting chops were more than up to it.
So when Harry Osborn saw the door open and drew breath to scold him for skipping three days of classes—leaving Harry with no one to talk to—Batman stepped forward and hugged him tight before he could speak.
He said nothing, just wore grief and gloom and waited for Harry to talk.
Harry had come to read him the riot act. But faced with his friend's pained expression, the rebuke died on his tongue. He patted Peter's back and murmured:
"It's okay, Peter. Whatever happened, I'll always—steadfastly—stand by your side."