Spiders and Bats: An Arachnid in Gotham
Disclaimer: Do people still do this? Eh. Better safe than sorry. So, uh, I don't own the characters depicted in the story nor do I claim to. Marvel Comics and DC do, though.
Gotham City.
The cesspool that thinks it's a town. The sewer beneath the world.
I've always wondered why people—especially good, honest people—choose to live here in this God-forsaken city as opposed to anywhere else in the world. Literally anywhere else would be a better choice than here.
Even New Jersey. And God, I hate Jersey. The entire state of New Jersey. Can you imagine me stepping foot in Jersey?
But seriously, anywhere else in the world would be preferable to Gotham. If the only inhabitable places left on Earth were Gotham and Antarctica, I'd choose Antarctica. And even if Antarctica weren't habitable, I'd choose it over Gotham any day of the week.
Believe me when I say that. I'd rather freeze in Antarctica than live in a city where psychopaths and murderers freely roam the streets as soon as the sun sets, while the police and the government are either too powerless or too corrupt to do anything about it.
I know what you're going to say. "But Spidey, you live in New York!"
Yeah, I live in New York, where Thor goes toe-to-toe with Skurge the Executioner at Central Park every other Tuesday, while the Mole Man brings out some subterranean monster to wreck Madison Square Garden at least once a month. You're thinking that I should know that New York itself is no different from Gotham City. That they're just the same. Hell, you might even say New York is even worst.
So now you're going to say, "So, why is it you're making a fuss about Gotham?"
Because they're not the same. They're so very not.
Let's look at the facts.
There are about a dozen or so supervillains in New York for every villain in Gotham. Fact. New York City has been leveled at least ten times ever since I've been born. Fact. It has been the stage for at least three alien invasions as far back as I can remember, and those are only the significant ones. Fact. Living in New York means that you've resigned yourself to the possibility of looking out your apartment window and seeing Sentinels marching in the streets in front of your building every other week. Fact.
Despite all of this and more, New York City is nowhere near the level Gotham's in when it comes to being the worst place on Earth. Gotham is in a whole league of its own.
Because the thing about Gotham is that… it's a city without hope.
You wake up in New York on a bright, sunny day, walk down Wall Street for your morning stroll for some reason, and you're liable to find yourself witnessing a robbery by the Wrecking Crew. You start to panic, you start to fear for your own life, you get trampled on by the sudden rush of people trying to get away from the bad guys… then all of a sudden you look up and see Captain America standing right in front of you, pulling you up while in his other hand he's holding his shield high.
Suddenly you don't feel scared anymore. Suddenly you feel safe. Then the cops come rushing in onto the scene—setting up barricades, assisting victims, doing what New York's finest is supposed to do. Every other superhero in the vicinity then joins Cap, and then you suddenly find yourself getting interviewed by the local news for being in the middle of the last, big superhero brawl.
And what you'll probably have is a big, goofy smile on your face as you tell them how awesome the whole thing was without a hint of irony. No matter how bad things get, people can live their lives in New York—they can go to school, raise families, have jobs, grow old, and in the end they can die living fulfilled lives. The police do their jobs, the government cares about the people (more or less), and the heroes are looked up to and respected.
I'm not saying everything is all peachy, it's just that… compare that to Gotham.
The cops are crooked. You can count all the honest cops on one or two hands, and maybe half of those are just rookies who don't get the 'gist' of being a Gotham City cop yet. Once they do, they'll probably turn rotten themselves. And if they don't, it'll probably only be a matter of time before they're either killed by the mob or their colleagues. City hall is no different. Everyone there gets paid by the mob, and if they're not—oh, who am I kidding? Everyone there gets their paycheck from the mob, no exceptions. At least, that's what I saw.
And the heroes? For the longest time, the people of the city didn't even believe he existed. For the longest time they were as afraid of him as the cowardly, superstitious lot of criminals were. And when they did realize he was real, what did they think? They didn't trust him. Even most of the very few honest cops in the city didn't trust him. For the longest time he was a vigilante feared and distrusted by the public, and hounded by the police. Sounds like someone I know, if you think about it.
Still, what I'm saying is: how can someone like that inspire hope in people?
And where am I going with this? All I'm trying to say is that despite everything he and his family has done, this city is still a city without hope. Sure, the citizens trust him now. Sure, the cops work with him now. But in the end nothing's changed.
Gotham is still plagued by the psychopaths, murderers, and nutjobs in its midst. It still has the highest death toll in the country. The local mental facility that should serve as a place of healing and care is treated as a prison where anyone who comes in comes out significantly worse than before. Plus, it and the local prison are two of the most easily escaped from holding facilities in the world.
In the end Gotham hasn't changed. It's still inflicted with a disease as old as civilization itself, one which has no cure.
No cure except a complete reset. Destruction then reconstruction from the bottom up.
Don't get me wrong. I would never dream for that to happen. But it's something to think about. Why can't everyone just leave Gotham, and leave it to rot in its own filth? Why can't they just let it die, then rebuild it? Why do they commit to it—to a life where one wrong turn can mean a slit throat at the hands of some psychotic clown, or a spore-induced hypnotic life of slavery under some crazy plant lady?
Because of this reason, I can never understand him.
He'll gladly die for it, this city. For a city so corrupt… for a city standing at the edge of oblivion, mere moments from falling, he'll gladly give his life. For a city that doesn't warrant protection, preservation, he'll risk his life night after night, trying to eradicate the criminal disease that plagues it—something so deeply ingrained in its roots that it can't be weeded out. For a city without hope, without one sliver of chance at seeing a better tomorrow, he'll die without regret.
Everything burned around him. The arachnid struggle to stand as everything was engulfed by the flames. He clutched his arm as blood flowed from the gaping wound cut across it.
He'd die before Gotham becomes ashes. He made me understand that, and for that reason alone I need to do this. I need to. It's what he would have wanted.
He scurries across the rooftop, as the monster flapped its wings, stalking him.
Can't think… body's going numb… but I can't give up now. I need to…
The spider stopped as he reached the edge. In front of him lied the city, set ablaze. He looked behind him and saw the winged monster launch itself through the air, its fangs bared towards him. As it neared him, it didn't notice the trap the spider had sprung up. In its haste it found itself tangled up on a web, and as it struggled to set itself free, the weblines tightened their grip around its wings and its legs, entangling itself more onto the web.
I can't give up. I can't let this city burn. It's what he would have wanted. Even if I had to fight him to protect this city, I would do it. It's what he would have asked me to do.
The spider moved towards it and bared its fangs, dripping with venom as black as blackest night.
And that's why I need to do this. I need to stop him. I can't let him do this. I won't…
The spider clamped his jaw around the bat's neck, piercing its hide with his fangs.
…I won't let Batman destroy Gotham City.
Chapter One: Secrets
Summers in Gotham were some of the hottest in the country. Which is fitting considering Gotham could very likely hold the title of hell on Earth, if such titles were awarded to the most hellish cities on the planet. Rainy seasons weren't any better, as it never just rains in Gotham. No, rains would be understating the Biblical storms that happen there every few months. In older times, hurricanes have even been documented to come to Gotham and Gotham alone, and somehow they quite promptly disappear once they leave the city border.
No one knows how or why it's like that, or even if those kinds of events are true and/or scientifically possible. Some people, the more superstitious denizens of this fair town, think the city was built on cursed land. And those kinds of weather, reminiscent of some mad god exacting punishment, was exactly that—punishment for a cursed people on cursed land.
I wouldn't blame them for thinking that. When it comes to Gotham, the sanity of explanations tend to go the way of batteries in a box of Hot Wheels racecars—not included.
Wait, do Hot Wheels cars need batteries?
I've never exactly owned one so… uh…
…Anyway, climatologists have always been baffled by these meteorological phenomena, and academics and scholars in the field have called Gotham City a goldmine for the study of freak meteorological conditions. None of them have ever been able to follow up on this discovery, however, as no man in their right mind would ever step foot in Gotham City without reasons better than 'for the pursuit of scientific inquiry'.
The only way they'd probably do it is if they didn't value their life. Which I consider those scientists do.
It's a shame, though. Since if they're that fascinated with a little heat and a little drizzle, they'd love the winters there. The winters that kept the Third Reich from reaching Russia in the Second World War have nothing against the winters that come to Gotham every year—and yes, I've been studying up on my history, thank you for asking. Gotham University has been studying Gotham's winters ever since the academy was founded, but to this day, no one can explain why Gotham's winters are so much harsher and more devastating than anywhere else on the east coast. Or anywhere else in the country for that matter.
Hell, anywhere else in the world, really. That includes you, Antarctica.
I met him during winter of last year—one of the coldest winters in recorded human history. To tell the truth, I never would have realized then that that day would be the beginning of the rest of my life.
Cheesy, I know, but that's how I feel about it. About him. About everything that happened afterwards.
And it was such a routine assignment.
When I came to the steel mill, I was expecting a night of stakeouts and punching people who deserve it really hard. You know, routine Batpeople stuff. I expected wrong.
When I got there, I found nine people hanging from the rafters of the maintenance room. They were all unconscious, except for one guy who saw me come in from one of the ventilation shafts and promptly passed out, probably expecting whoever did this to them to come back.
I went out the door and began walking through the hallway, coming up to the next unconscious thug or so and finding out to my relief that he was indeed just unconscious and not dead. Because, you know, we have the whole 'not killing' thing going on.
When I came to the assembly line, I slowly opened the door, and found something I wasn't sure what to make of at the time.
On one of the platforms, something—someone—in a black outfit was waltzing through the room, dodging gunfire at pointblank range and beating up everyone inside. He never moved like any human being I know—if he was even human, I thought to myself then. He leaped around the place, moving too fast for any of the thugs that charged at him to even touch him.
It was when the clown came out that I grappled up to the rafters and began to watch. I was taught to sometimes just watch how things played out before I determined my next move. Charging straight ahead into the fray blah, blah, blah get me killed yadda, yadda that kind of stuff, you know?
As if I was some new kid who had to be taught that.
"I came out here expecting the Bat to make a courtesy call," spoke the clown, as he brandished a large, serrated combat knife. It was probably a foot or so long. "Instead I find some guy I've never seen before trouncing my crew like they were some drunk, newborn babies. In fact, those moves seem kind of familiar. Is that you, Nightwing? I'm thinking you spilled coffee on your nice, clean suit, and your old disco outfit was too embarrassing to wear again, so now you just took some leftover rags and drew a… huh, that's not a bird now, is it? And it looks nothing like a bat."
"Sheesh. I thought you'd never shut up," spoke the man in black. "This is probably what my enemies feel like when I don't stop talking."
"Huh, so you aren't Nightwing," replied the clown, as he juggled the knife in one hand. "Then what's that supposed to be? A crab?"
The man's bug-eyes opened wide in surprise. "You and I have very different ideas about what crabs look like. This is obviously a—"
The clown sliced forward, as the man in black nonchalantly dodges to the left.
"You're pretty quick," remarked the clown, and he stabs to his side. "You might even be faster than Nightwing."
The man wasn't there anymore, having leaped back. The clown then lunges forwards like a snake striking at a mouse in a field—
Or something, I don't know, is that too much? Too wordy? Alright, then let's just leave it at 'snake striking at a mouse'. That's better.
—snake striking at a mouse when the man in black catches his arm, and gives him a jab straight to the gut. The clown doubles back, and is then hit by an uppercut straight to the chin. A right hook to the jaw then knocks him down flat on his back, and he clutches his stomach in pain.
"You're… you're good," said the clown, laughing weakly. "But… but soft. Any one of the Bat's little family… would have broken my arm… when they catch it like that—except that new Batgirl, she seems… pretty squeamish. But hell, I can… tell that you were… you were even holding back, weren't you? HAHAHAHA!"
For the record, I'm not squeamish. I just really hate the sound of bones cracking.
"If I didn't, I would have drilled a hole in your stomach or made your head explode, and honestly, I hate it when that happens," said the man.
"Heh," chuckled the clown. "You're joking about… killing people when you've never done it before! HAHAHAHA! Oh, I can tell that, too. Jokes… are my tools of the trade. You joke about killing… but it's so obvious you… have goody two-shoes morals like he does. You're like… like the Bat in that regard, I guess. The whole 'not killing' thing. You're both… goody little two-shoes do-gooders in funny outfits—he has a… bat on his costume and you've got a… a…"
The man sighed. "Like I was trying to say, it's a—"
With unmatched agility, he leaped up and over the clown as an oversized hammer came down on where he would have been standing had he not moved. The hammer smashed down onto the floor with enough force to dent it.
The man in black looked back behind him, and saw a pretty blonde—who in my opinion is not as pretty as he makes her out to be—in white make-up and a domino mask wearing a skintight red and black outfit. She lifted up the oversized mallet she was carrying and rested it like a baseball bat on her shoulder.
"Harley, you idiot!" cried the clown, as he continued to lie on the floor. "You missed."
"Sorry, Mistah J," apologized the woman, as she ran towards the man in black. "I won't miss this time."
She swung the hammer down at him as fast as she could, but the man was too quick for her to hit. As she looked up, she found two, large bug eyes staring at her.
"Hey, Harley, right?" asked the man in black as he crouched on top of the platform railings. "You're actually pretty cute for a psychotic, anybody ever tell you that?"
She's not that cute. Really.
Not… not that I care, of course. I'm not jealous or anything. I didn't even know him during that time. I'm just pointing out the obvious, for your convenience.
"And you're pretty talky for minced meat, anybody ever tell you that?" snapped back the woman, as she swung her mallet sideward over the railings. To her surprise, the man wasn't even there anymore.
"You kind of remind me of one my old girlfriends, only, you know, you're less mentally stable," remarked the man, as he moved from side to side, effortlessly dodging the giant mallet as it came down in barrage of attacks.
"And you," moaned the woman, as the repeated swings began to wear her down, "you… remind me of… of minced meat."
"You already said that," spoke the man in black. He caught the hammer as it swung down from mid-air.
"Aw, crap," cried Harley, as she tried to pull her hammer back, to no avail. "I… I'm no good with… ha, making jokes on the fly. Well… at least not when I'm, ha… tired like this. Ha… this is actually pretty heavy."
"Let me help you with that," spoke the man in black, as he crushed the mallet in one hand. It splintered and cracked just before exploding into sawdust.
"Aw, crap. And that was… ha, my favorite mallet, too," cried Harley, as she saw her mallet burst in front of her. She collapsed to the floor from exhaustion. "Aw, man… ha, I need to work out more."
"Huh," spoke the man in black. "You know, now that I've gotten a better look at you, you've actually got a nice figure. Maybe you just need to work on your stamina more."
Flustered, Harley immediately put her arms over her chest and crossed her legs.
"Where do you think you're looking, creep?" she cried.
"What?" cried the man in black, shaking his head. "No! That's not what I… I mean, that's not how I meant it. I just figured… you know, that, uh… dammit."
In the space of seconds, he went from witty to witless. It was cute in an incredibly dorky way.
Behind him, the clown had managed to get back up on his feet. He pulled out a comically, large gun from his inside his suit, and trained it on the man in black, and, well—this is where I came in.
I jumped down from the rafters and, after gaining momentum, stomped on the Joker just as he was getting ready to pull the trigger, knocking him out cold. The man in black turned around, and I'd like to think he appreciated getting saved by yours truly.
Before one of us could speak, however, Harley took to her heels and began running. Nearing the door, the man in black shot a webline at her feet, knocking her down.
He pulled her back towards us, and in an instant, Harley found her entire body covered by the man in black's thick, heavy spraying of white, sticky webbing and oh my God, there was no way I could have described that in a less sexually suggestive way. That joke was so easy and obvious, I couldn't pass up the chance. It'll be like the biggest missed opportunity of my career.
"You better not get your goop in my hair, you—" she began, before her mouth was webbed shut.
"Relax, I wouldn't want that happening to anyone," he reassured her. "These things dissolve in an hour or so, but man, if they get on your hair you'd have to shave yourself bald. I mean it."
He then webbed the Joker, before approaching me as I searched the clown.
"Thanks for the save there," he told me. "Though I could have dodged the bullet had he tried to shoot me. It's kind of my thing."
"You're… welcome, though," I said, awkwardly. "Right?"
"Oh, yeah. Yes, of course," he doubled back. "I appreciate it, of course. You're… uh, you're Batgirl, right?"
"That's me," I told him, proudly. I've only been Batgirl for two weeks as of then, but it's nice when people recognize me.
Well, 'recognize' was the word of the day then.
"Strange," he remarked, cupping his chin. "I feel like I've met you before… it's like… oh my God."
He wrapped one arm around my waist without warning—very snugly, too, and you can imagine the nerve of that guy—and then shot webline at one of the upper windows. Like what my grapple gun does, he pulled us up towards it, and we found ourselves outside on the snowy rooftop of the Sionis Steel Mill.
He sort of paced around, worriedly, before I managed to ask him what was wrong.
"I… know who you are," he said, unsure if he should have said so.
"Y-you do?" I stuttered. I spent more than a year as Spoiler and no one found me out, but only two weeks as Batgirl and someone had already figured out my secret identity?
"I do," he said. "At least, I think I do."
I took a deep breath. "Alright," I said then. "You think you know who I am. And maybe you do. But… it doesn't look like that that's the reason you're walking around looking troubled, so… what is it? What's the problem?"
"Look," he said, as he grabbed me by the shoulders. It was kind of scary, with the way those two, inhuman-looking bug-eyes on his mask stared at me. "I came to Gotham looking for help. I trounced Joker's gang because I thought it was the best way to get your attention."
"My attention?" I asked. I felt myself blushing and I didn't know why.
"Well, not your attention, specifically."
"Oh." What a tease.
"I meant your attention, as in your family," he explained. "The bats and birds of Gotham. I needed Batman's help."
"Oh, well, that's not a problem," I told him. "Batman helps everybody. We're superheroes, it's what we do. I don't see what the problem is."
He let go of me and shook his head.
"We're superheroes, right?" he continued. "And we have secret identities."
"Yeah," I said. "And you think you know mine."
He shrugged. "I don't think that I just think I do, anymore. I definitely know who you are now."
"How can you be so su—?"
"Your voice, your hair, your eyes," he answered. "I remember because we met before. We met this morning."
That's when it hit me. Even though all I can discern from him is his voice, it definitely sounded familiar. I definitely recognized him, too: his stance, the way he walked, the way he hung his head—he looked a little more confident then than when I first met him, but it was definitely him.
"If we had met anywhere else, I think I still would have recognized who you are," he continued. "But because we met there, I know not just who you are now, but I know who they are now. I know every one of you. All because the two of us met at that place."
The snow started to fall then, faintly, around the two of us. My breathing grew labored. My cheeks felt hot, and I could feel my heart beating faster. I could feel a sudden rush happening, some sort of sudden ecstasy and excitement, but I didn't understand why then.
"You're... Stephanie," he said. "Stephanie Brown."
My chest tightened. I felt naked when I took off my mask and told him he was right. The snow was falling around us but I felt hot then.
"You know who I am now, too," he said, "don't you?"
I nodded. "You're Peter," I said under my breath. "Peter... Parker. Spider-Man."
He took off his mask. He ruffled his hair, and stared at me with these large, hazel eyes.
I felt myself getting hotter then, as the cold weather around us tried to get under my skin. I felt my cheeks flush... I felt excitement and fear at the same time, and I didn't understand why.
"Alright, we're both naked now."
"What?"
"I mean, you know," I stuttered, "we both know each other's secret identity. We're metaphorically naked. Like the masks are what hides the secret, private-type things underneath. I didn't mean that literally, and that was in no way a Freudian slip, just so you know."
"Right," he said agreeably, and I'm pretty sure only because he felt more awkward than I did. "Of course, you don't."
"Let's just… let's just forget that now," I told him. "So you know who I am now. What makes you think you know the rest of the Batmen, Batgals and Bird-boys?"
"Because of the place where we met," he said, as he crossed his arms. "Had we met anywhere else at that time, I might have found out who you are when we saw each other again here, but not who they were. But that wasn't the case, so now I know who every one of you are. And that's a problem."
"Why is that?"
"Because one of the men I'm after," he said, "the reason I came to Gotham to ask for help, is the man I would have asked help from."
I suddenly realized. "You don't mean…"
"The man I'm after is Bruce Wayne," he said finally. "And as it turns out… Batman."
End of Chapter 1