In The Web Of Gotham

Hitting The Target

While Spider-Man was swinging through the Gotham skyline, his mind was abuzz with more questions than answers. His initial vigilante days were literally just him using his connections to the police to wiggle room his way around the city with Spider-Man.

"This all got so goddamn complicated so fast..." Spider-Man remorsed to himself. He perched onto a clocktower and looked down over the city as a whole, taking time to just appreciate the lights. He could see the cars going by street by street, trying to memorize each of the license plates to calm himself down. Keeping track of the street names that each car would turn down, using his memories of the road maps of Gotham that were posted up in the GCPD precinct.

The scent of burning rubber from street racing, exhaust from people living their lives and heading to and from work or bars or diners. His advanced hearing could hear the mumblings down below, people just worried about their day to day lives. Some worried about the place they live in, how Gotham's still an absolute criminal cesspool that's so bizarrely magnetic to the malcontent that it's ridiculous. Some of them aren't wrong, some of them are just misunderstanding this city. All of them are telling the truth though. This city is sick, and the police are trying to be the cure.

We do as good a job as we can, but when one of the symptoms of this sickness is a borderline hulk of a luchador man who has a gang juiced up on super soldier serum which was turned into steroids. Or a lunatic clown who's punchline is chaos and destruction...it's understandable that people would be frustrated and say there is no cure for whatever is afflicting Gotham. Maybe there isn't a cure, but we're just a deterent from things getting absolutely disastrous.

Spider-Man's thoughts had suddenly stopped as his spider sense suddenly went off, his body reacting on its own to duck out of the way and catch a rifle bullet out of midair. In his fingertips was a green tipped 5.56 mm rifle round. An armor penetrator round, fired from somewhere behind him. Looking behind him, Spider-Man was searching in the immediate area behind the clocktower. Not seeing anything initially, Spider-Man slipped the bullet into a compartment of his utility belt.

Being cautious, Spider-Man leapt off of the clock tower and started swinging away, trying to find one of the secret entrances to the Batcave. Spider-Man pulled his phone out of his utility belt, along with a small black box with a connector that he plugged into his phone's charging port. The moment he plugged it in, the black box flipped open and the phone started dialing and ringing with a red light flashing on the device. He heard someone pick up the call, and the familiar voice of Oracle came through the other end of the call.

"Spider-Man, what's up?" Oracle asked. Spider-Man simply looked at the metallic compartment that held the bullet inside of it and kept his other ear open and ready to catch any subtle noises.

"Hey Oracle. Could you open up any nearby entrance of the cave for me to get in? I'm chasing a potential case?" Spider-Man asked.

"Yeah, I'll open one up for you. I just need to key in on your Oracle Link transmitter, and I can open the closest one for you to hop into," Oracle explained as the light on the Oracle Link turning a stationary yellow. Presumably because it was emitting a different signal that Oracle trying to key in to. Then Spider-Man began hearing mechanical hisses from underneath a manhole cover.

From the sewer lid, silently rose a cylindrical elevator cabin. As that rose, the light of the Oracle Link turned green. Indicating that not only has Oracle found where he was, but that this was an entrance to the Batcave.

"There we go. By the way, since I'm also detecting a Midnight Mission card on you? The O's on the 'Gotham Municipal Waterwork' all through the city can detect the authorization signal of that and let you in. For future reference, you know? Since I won't be able to always let you in with the Oracle Link," Oracle remarked and explained.

"Thanks Oracle, I'll keep that in mind in the future," Spider-Man responded as he hung up the phone and disconnected the Oracle Link transmitter and slipping both back into his utility belt. Getting into the elevator, hearing the door quietly hiss closed behind him. He felt the release of the elevator begin to drop down and rapidly suction down through a deep underground network of vacuum tubes. Occasional stops, and redirects like track changes on a railroad to keep the trip going as the elevator went down to the familiar hideaway that is the Batcave.

The elevator parked itself in place, opening up and letting Spider-Man free to explore the cave. His mind was set though on the ammunition in his belt, and Spider-Man went over to the Batcomputer and placed the bullet into the forensic scanner and activated the system. While the computer was analyzing the round and it's properties, Spider-Man remembered Mr. Knight's advice and look around the cave for backup eye masks. He found one that was labeled "Nightwing Backups" where it was a black domino style mask that pointed upwards towards the forehead, and also pointed downwards to the lower cheek.

Before he could do anything much with the mask, the computer beeped and alerted Peter that the analysis was completed. Leaping over to the computer, Peter looked at the characteristics of the bullets that the computer determined.

The bullet was a modified 5.56 caliber bullet, designed primarily as an armor piercing round. At the same time, the bullet was set on an accelerometer based system for somrthing. Once getting past a certain speed threshold, the bullet would start emitting a...homing signal. Comparable to that of a radio transmitter, where it sends a signal to someone with a receiver on the correct or corresponding frequency. Which could lead directly to the cave.

"What?! Who the fuck makes these bullets?!" Peter swore to himself as he rapidly looked through the rest of the information. Going as far as tapping into the CCTV cameras from around the city to try and figure out who shot the bullet. After watching several screens at once, Peter found a screen with a figure that might match the Modus Operandi. Red body armor, a white and silver helmet with a red reticle over one of the eyes. Wrist mounted hand cannons, as he stood up with the red and black rifle slinging it over his shoulder.

"Floyd Lawton? Why is Deadshot back in Gotham? I thought he was MIA for theast few years in Gotham," Peter asked as he came across one last bit of information about the bullet that's from Batman's personal footnotes. Something that Batman experienced in the past that he added as an addendum to the computer for future reference...

Modified Bullets of this make and model are commonly made and distributed by sub-divisions of the Cadmus Organization.