LOOTING DC #2. Stupid, Smart, Spider Suit
Gotham had its share of abandoned buildings and forgotten places - havens for rats and the homeless to fight over whatever scraps came by.
In one such ruin, Jake sat flat on the floor, back against a concrete pillar, his shirt peeled off and tossed aside.
His torso looked like someone had used him for target practice - because, technically, they had. Bullet wounds, still fresh, puckered his skin. They weren't gushing anymore, but the deep ones were taking their sweet time closing up.
His healing factor worked, sure. But fast didn't mean instant, and every twitch reminded him that, yeah, bullets hurt.
He didn't even want to remember how he'd plucked the bullets. With minimal resources, he had had to rely on his nails.
He hadn't been hit anywhere critical, but even if he had, his skin was superhumanly tough and durable, increasing his chances of survival.
Not to say he was immortal. The guns those goons had used on him were pretty standard, and Jake knew this world harbored far deadlier weapons - ones that could blow him to pieces with just a single shot.
If he kept throwing himself into fights as recklessly as he had, he wouldn't live long enough to confirm whether God truly existed. Or did you have to die to know that?
And let's face it, Jake had been absolutely reckless. He'd gone in without a plan, even after acknowledging that he might be ill-equipped to engage professionals. Then again, looking back, they might not have been the professionals he had in mind. He'd half-expected Killer Croc to show up, and that would have been- how to put it? - biting off more than he'd learned to chew.
Anyway, his reckless tactics had made him rely solely on adrenaline for survival - so much so that he even missed some notifications from his Spider-Sense. Adrenaline majored in brute force, telling him he could take a bullet or two, while his Spider-Sense would have told him otherwise.
And some of his moves - Goddammit! Pulling the side mirror? Who does that?
"Ow, ow," Jake cringed at the memory, his open wounds searing from the pain of tensed muscles.
He could have at least hurled something at the van. He was sure he had the strength to lift a sedan with his webs. From the speed they were moving at, he could have made a substantial shot and-
No. No. That was another stupid thought that would have gotten him seriously hurt. Hurling a car? What was he, Superman? Come on. There had to be a smarter alternative.
Yeah. A smart move - like not blinding a guy with a finger on the trigger.
Jake was getting depressed. If there were a superhero school out there, he'd enroll immediately. He was clearly an amateur - lucky to have come out alive, let alone with just a few wounds and a bag of loot.
He'd tossed the bag, but not too far from where he sat. He'd considered rummaging through it, but one glance at the hole in the bottom, and he dreaded opening it to find nothing. No results to show for what he'd suffered through.
When had the bag even torn? Kudos to him for not realizing he could stick to things - like the van's roof - instead of letting it toss him around when the driver succumbed. He could have made it out earlier. With all the three bags intact.
"Fuck me!" Something bitter rose in his chest. Dying would have been better than resenting himself.
But he'd never been one to give up so easily. Not from the trauma of his past, and certainly not after a few crappy mistakes. He'd live to do better.
He exhaled sharply. Alright. Think, Jake.
His wounds were still taking their sweet time.
Speed this up.
Something in his mind unlocked. Suddenly, he started thinking about everything that could possibly accelerate his healing.
Calories. He needed a lot of them, and his stomach seemed to agree.
Grimacing, he forced himself up and pulled on his hoodie. Every movement was agony. Not unbearable, but enough to make him wince with every limping step.
He already knew where to find the calories. A convenience store would do just fine. And luckily, he'd spotted one still open on his way in.
A few minutes later, he was back at his hideout with an armful of junk - protein bars, energy drinks, several more wounds, and a bag of those questionable neon-orange cheese puffs. More importantly, he now had clarity on why he needed the calories: healing required energy.
He tore into the food first, stuffing his face like a starving raccoon. Carbs. Fats. Sugars. All immediate energy.
A while later, his mind reeled with crazy thoughts fueled by the sudden sugar rush.
What if…
Jake was thinking hard. What would happen if he had just a pinch of Kobra-Venom? No - an entire vial of it. What wonders it could do to his healing factor.
But getting the serum meant finding a dark alleyway vendor-
Jake was already on his feet, making his way toward Gotham's streets.
In his absence, a rat scurried forward, finally seizing its chance to investigate the black bag it had been obsessing over. Maybe there was food inside.
Wasting no time, it darted toward the torn bottom hole and burrowed inside. The first thing its teeth sank into was - disappointing.
Great. Paper.
Still, hunger was hunger. It gnawed through as much of it as possible, hoping to find something better. But there was nothing. Just more paper - some rough, some smooth. But it was enough to satisfy its hunger.
And then, for the first time, the rat noticed.
Just a few feet away - bags of sweet-smelling food, crumbs scattered across the floor. Actual food.
The realization almost made it collapse from sheer frustration. It had been so fixated on the bag that it hadn't noticed anything else. And now, it was full - but damn if it didn't still want something sweet.
Before it could make a move, the human returned, forcing it to scamper to safety.
Jake entered, arms full of supplies, stomach still aggressively digesting the disaster he'd just inhaled. The rat fled into the shadows.
He dropped his loot and sank back into his spot, eyes flicking to the dark bag. Curious. But wary of disappointment. He postponed the task of rummaging through it.
His wounds were still sluggish, the deeper ones barely scabbing over.
Using the supplies he'd just raided from a pharmacy, he cleaned his wounds as best as he could - gritting his teeth as he poured antiseptic over them (yep, that stung like hell), then pressing gauze against the worst ones. After that, he downed a handful of pills, including a mild anesthetic, because screw this pain.
And then… finally… rest.
The reason he'd gone out in the first place had slipped from his mind the second he'd realized he seriously needed an NMN or even Metformin (whatever those were) to boost his NAD+ levels (whatever that was) before a nasty infection put him on bed rest. Probably wouldn't happen, but he wasn't willing to find out yet.
Ah. Kobra-Venom. Could be helpful. But maybe not tonight.
His thoughts were slipping, turning fuzzy at the edges.
Oh. Right. The anesthetic.
Jake let his head fall back, blinking at the ceiling. His mind was still running numbers, mapping out metabolic rates and ATP synthesis like he was some kind of human calculator.
When did I even learn that Metformin accelerates cellular regeneration? Isn't that a diabetes drug?
Mix that with radioactive cells and…
His eyelids drooped.
And then - Oh, crap. I can literally see the numbers now.
And just like that, he was out.
When he woke up, he was drowning in sweat. His hoodie clung to him like wet plastic wrap, his skin sticky and burning. It wasn't the cozy, "I'm-a-human-burrito" kind of warmth. No, this was the toxic, drug-fueled, "Did-I-just-get-buried-alive?" heat.
His pulse hammered behind his eyes, like someone was knocking on the door of his skull. Slowly, he sat up. His wounds hadn't scabbed over - ugly, dark patches pulling at his skin like cracked leather - but they had completely healed, his skin replaced anew.
Why was he feeling like crap then? Has to do with all those drugs. Probably should've suffered through the pain and let immunity do it's thing.
The light hit him like an insult.
Sun?
His brain lagged a solid second behind the realization. He'd overslept. Not in a "missed-my-alarm" kind of way, but in an "I-could've-been-murdered-in-my-sleep" way.
Jake's heart picked up, thumping like a warning drum. He scrambled up, wincing, eyes darting around the skeleton of the building. No signs of imminent danger - apart from the building crumbling and burying him alive. Just peeling concrete, broken glass, and the faint, acidic stench of rat piss.
Not my wisest choice of a hotel, he thought bitterly.
Once the adrenaline simmered down, logic clicked back into place. His gaze shifted to the black bag. The bag from the previous night. The bag that had been sitting there - unguarded, vulnerable, just like him.
Alright. Let's see if you were worth the trouble.
He stretched lazily, dragging the bag into the dusty light. The hole at the bottom had grown since last he'd checked, ragged edges gnawed through. Rats?
Opening it was like shaking out a disappointing Christmas stocking. A few crumpled hundreds, edges chewed and damp with something he chose not to identify. The cash looked like it had been through more than he had - half-digested, frayed, useless.
Jake held one up, squinting. Could I still use this? Maybe dry-clean it? Exchange it at a shady pawn shop?
The answer settled somewhere between probably not and hell no.
He sighed, shoving the ruined bills aside, when something else caught his eye. A mess of crumpled, half-eaten paper buried underneath the cash. He tugged it free, shaking off a few crusty rat droppings.
Blueprints.
Or what was left of them.
Large, torn sheets with faded ink, edges frayed and stained. Most of the lines were smudged, with entire sections missing - Gotham rats weren't exactly delicate architects. But some markings remained. Enough to read two words stamped along the border:
"GOTHAM OLD UNDERGROUND TUNNELS."
Jake tilted his head, curiosity poking through the haze of exhaustion. Underground tunnels?
He stared, trying to piece together the puzzle. What the hell were those goons planning? Smuggling? Weapons caches? Maybe a hidden vault? A forgotten stash of gold bars? Okay, maybe not that. This wasn't a pirate movie.
Still, the mystery gnawed at him more than the rats had at the paper. He squinted, flipping the blueprints around, trying to make sense of the labyrinth of lines and notes. But they were too damaged. Navigating with these would be like using a burnt map to find buried treasure.
Not worth the effort, Jake decided, crumpling the fragile sheets and tossing them aside.
Whatever criminal mastermind had needed them was either dead, in jail, or somewhere out there missing a bag of shredded plans and rat-spit money. Not my problem anymore.
"Hm?" He reconsidered, snatching the blueprints back and stuffing them into his pockets.
He then stretched, testing the limits of his completely healed, but exhausted, body. Yep. Mostly good to go.
Time for food. Something greasy enough to make his arteries cry. Maybe pancakes. Definitely coffee.
Jake stuffed the salvageable bills into his pocket - because hey, even chewed-up hundreds were still hundreds in the right places - and headed out.
As he stepped into the harsh Gotham daylight, he made a mental note:
Next time, find a safer place to almost die.
Jake swung through Gotham, his body finally relaxing, muscles syncing with the rhythmic pull and release of his webs. For a moment, just a moment, the swinging was fun. The wind in his face, gravity teasing his guts, the effortless grace of it all.
But then Gotham's signature stench caught up - urban decay, wet garbage, burnt rubber, and something else he couldn't quite place. Desperation? Regret? Yeah, probably. Whatever it was, it sucked the fun right out of the moment.
His excitement nosedived, hitting the Gotham Brooding Threshold™. Time to focus.
Jake shifted gears, mentally and physically, angling toward the next part of his plan - if you could call it that. First order of business: information.
He spotted a guy outside a café, sipping overpriced coffee and typing away on a sleek laptop, headphones in, oblivious to the world. Perfect.
Thwip.
A quick flick of his wrist, and the laptop sailed into Jake's waiting hands like it had been gift-wrapped just for him. The guy barely had time to register what happened, yanking out his earbuds and shouting something indignant. Jake considered it for a split second - returning the laptop later, maybe even tossing the guy a wad of rat-chewed cash as an apology.
Then he remembered who he was.
"Eh. Nah," Jake muttered, tucking the stolen tech under his arm and swinging off without a shred of guilt.
Next came coffee - webbed straight from the tray of an unfortunate barista balancing three cups. One cup for Jake. The rest? Casualties of war.
Ice cream? Easy pickings from a distracted kid. Jake gave him a quick thumbs-up as he vanished over a rooftop.
Burger? Stolen mid-bite from a cop's hand. The man's reaction? Pure, righteous fury.
Cue the chase sequence.
Jake darted through Gotham's skyline with a cop's shout trailing behind like an angry punctuation mark. The guy wasn't even close to catching him, but Jake appreciated the effort. It kept things interesting.
Eventually, he ditched the pursuit and landed on the rooftop of a sleek office building. The spot was perfect. Shaded from the sun, high enough to avoid casual detection, quiet, and - most importantly - Wifi.
Jake spread out his loot: lukewarm coffee, slightly melted ice cream, a burger with one suspicious bite mark, and the laptop. The food disappeared first. Calories were calories, and his metabolism didn't care if they were stolen or suspicious.
Then he powered up the laptop.
Luckily, it was still on, the previous owner mid-email when Jake had swiped it. But even if it had been locked, Jake had a weird confidence about it. Something about the way his mind had been working lately - how he'd randomly known about Metformin and ATP synthesis. He wasn't exactly a tech genius, but he figured if he could mentally map out cellular regeneration, hacking a laptop couldn't be that hard. Right?
Wrong.
The first roadblock hit him like a slap: Wi-Fi.
He needed the internet. And, of course, the office network was locked behind a password. Jake squinted at the screen, serious expression on his face.
"Alright, genius," he muttered to himself. "How hard can this be?"
His fingers flew, tapping the keyboard like it owed him money - not with skill, but with sheer chaotic energy. Password guesses. Random codes. Attempts to brute-force his way through sheer stubbornness.
Between frantic keystrokes and thoughtfully sipping the stolen coffee, Jake tried to coax his inner genius to claw its way to the surface.
The Wi-Fi icon taunted him with its smug little exclamation mark. Locked. Secured. Password-protected.
"Almost there," Jake lied to himself.
Cue the first sign of desperation: he actually Googled how to crack a Wi-Fi password from a 'borrowed' phone.
The results were exactly what you'd expect - forums filled with jargon, YouTube tutorials featuring sketchy voice-overs, and steps that might as well have been written in ancient Sumerian for all the good they did him. Still, he tried. Commands he didn't fully understand flew across the screen. Nothing.
Then something clicked - not on the screen, but in his head. A hunch. Like an itch behind his brain. He couldn't explain it, but he stopped looking at the tutorials. His fingers moved before he consciously told them to, typing a string of commands he'd never learned. Just followed his gut.
Enter.
The Wi-Fi connected.
Jake froze, staring at the screen. Blinking. Processing.
"…Huh." He leaned back and put on a smug expression. "Knew I could do it."
He was starting to get a sense of how this worked. It wasn't like recalling something he'd memorized or flipping through mental flashcards. It was more intuitive, like his Spider-Sense but for information.
The trick wasn't to focus harder - it was to let go, to stop overthinking and trust that his brain already had the answer tucked away somewhere. Almost like the knowledge wasn't being pulled from memory but surfacing on its own when he asked the right question.
To test the theory, he asked himself the dumbest question he could think of. "What's the average lifespan of a spider?"
The answer popped into his head effortlessly. About one to two years for most species, but tarantulas can live over twenty.
Jake blinked. "Okay, that's… mildly unsettling."
But he pushed the weirdness aside - he had more pressing things to worry about. Like checking the news. He navigated to a local feed, heart thumping with equal parts fear and ego.
No headlines screamed his name. No city-wide manhunt. No "Masked Menace Terrorizes Gotham" splashed across the front page.
Almost disappointing.
But buried beneath articles about corporate scandals and crime reports, he found a blurry photo. A figure mid-swing, hoodie flapping, face obscured. Budding criminal activity - unidentified vigilante spotted in Gotham Bridge.
Jake's stopped to think.
Someone had managed to take a picture of him? It was grainy, sure, and his hoodie was intact, but it was enough to make his skin crawl. Logically, he knew he didn't exist in any database here. No fingerprints, no school records, no paper trail. But paranoia had its way of whispering louder than logic.
I need to be more discreet.
That's when it hit him: I need a suit.
Not some hoodie-and-sweatpants combo that screamed amateur hour. Something built for this. For him.
Ideas formed quickly. He could proceed with robbing a bank - fast cash. Too high risk, for now. He'd already played with fire swinging around Gotham. The city had surveillance - cameras, patrols, eyes in every shadow. Jake wasn't about to make Peter's mistake of being reckless with his identity.
His rat-chewed stash of crumpled bills wouldn't cover the materials anyway. He didn't have a fancy high school lab stocked with Stark-level tech. And honestly, he wasn't ready to confront just how much he apparently knew about synthetic fibers and tensile strength.
Then the answer came - simple, clear.
Why reinvent the wheel?
He dug into his pockets, pulling out the chewed blueprints from earlier: GOTHAM OLD UNDERGROUND TUNNELS.
Jake traced the faded lines with his finger, his mind racing faster than his pulse.
A reckless idea was coming to mind.
"Would this really work?" he whispered. "Would it really lead me to…"