The Laughing Spider #36
Bane's patience crystallized into something sharp and final.
"Now, Spider." His voice dropped to something almost gentle. The tubes pulsed once, rhythmic green matching his heartbeat. "I've been patient. Watched you burn. Watched you choose survival over surrender." He stood, frame blocking the tunnel's only exit. "Time to break you."
Jake's wrapped chest hitched. Not the shallow gasps from before. Deeper. More deliberate. His left hand twitched against concrete, fingers scraping uselessly -- the limb still too weak to support weight, tendons firing randomly as the Kobra-Venom forced reconstruction.
But his left arm moved. Planted palm-down. Pushed.
His torso lifted an inch. Two. The wrappings tore as muscles engaged that shouldn't have been capable of engagement. Chemical burns wept green fluid that hissed against concrete.
Three inches. Four.
Bane watched with the intensity of a naturalist observing something rare. "Yes. There it is."
Jake's body trembled with the effort. His spine threatened to buckle -- vertebrae still settling from Bane's corrections, not fully healed, grinding against each other with sounds like distant gunfire.
But he kept pushing.
Six inches. Eight.
His left arm shook. The right hung limp, fingers twitching in aborted attempts to assist. But he was rising. Impossibly. Against everything biology claimed possible.
Ten inches. He was nearly upright now, torso at forty-five degrees.
"Good Night!" Harley's voice cracked with joy and relief and something desperate. She crawled toward him, broken ribs forgotten, makeup-streaked face splitting into a smile that hurt to witness. "Baby, you came back. I knew you'd-- I knew my mallet wouldn't--"
Jake's left arm shot out.
Not reaching. Not welcoming. Striking.
His palm caught her chest. The impact sent her flying backward -- not far, he didn't have the strength for far, but enough. Enough to slam her against the tunnel wall with a wet crack that might have been ribs or might have been skull.
She crumpled. Stared at him. Eyes wide. Mouth open in shock that transcended pain.
"You--" The word bubbled up with blood. "You hit me?"
Jake's body finished rising. Sitting upright now, though barely. His right arm dangled useless. His left trembled with the effort of staying planted. But his head turned toward her with mechanical precision.
His half-wrapped face showed nothing. But beneath the fabric, his jaw worked. Grinding. Fighting.
The pheromones surged -- make her smile, ease her pain, be good, apologize, crawl back and beg forgiveness--
The Kobra-Venom surged harder -- MOVE, FIGHT, DOMINATE, SURVIVE--
And somewhere between them, buried under chemical warfare, Jake Cross screamed a single word that made it past corrupted vocal cords:
"SHUT--" The syllable tore his throat. Blood bubbled at the wrappings covering his mouth. "UP."
His left hand moved to his back. Found the shattered pot. The rose still embedded there, thorns deep in flesh, roots wrapped around spine.
He grabbed it.
The thorns tore through his palm. Ripped channels through chemical-scarred skin. Green pheromone concentrate flooded the wounds, one final desperate injection.
Make her smile. Please her. Be hers. Be good. Be--
Jake pulled.
The roots came free with sounds like tearing wet paper. Flesh came with them -- chunks of back muscle, fragments of vertebrae, pieces of himself that should have stayed internal.
He dropped the rose. It hit concrete and shattered completely, petals scattering like toxic confetti.
The pheromone flood peaked. Then crashed. Then began its retreat as his healing factor finally -- finally -- had something to work with besides constant injection.
Jake's head cleared. Not completely. Not even mostly. But enough.
Enough to remember Lady Vic's spine compressing. King Snake's neck snapping. The helicopter crew screaming. The officers at Gotham National bleeding out while he laughed.
Enough to know whose fault it was.
His left wrist rose. Aimed at Harley. At the woman still staring at him like he'd just murdered her entire world.
Green webbing began forming at the glands.
Then he saw his hand.
Black.
Not the chemical scarring he'd grown accustomed to. Not burns or bruises or trauma. Black like char. Like something carbonized. Like flesh turned to coal while still attached to living bone.
The color spread up his forearm. Past his elbow. Black veins visible beneath skin, pulsing with each heartbeat. The Kobra-Venom and Joker toxin at war, and this was the battlefield -- his left arm becoming the concentrated point of chemical warfare.
His right arm showed nothing. Clean. Healing normally. Just weak.
His body was isolating the poison. Quarantining it. Letting one limb die so the rest could live.
Jake stared at the blackened fingers. At the way they still moved despite looking like they belonged on a corpse. At how the webbing forming at his wrist was darker, more viscous, smoking with concentration that made his previous acidic strands look like spit.
Horror tried to surface. Failed. The adrenaline was too strong. The rage too pure.
He looked back at Harley.
She was trying to stand. Failing. Her legs wouldn't cooperate. Broken ribs had punctured something vital -- each breath brought pink froth to her lips.
But she was trying. Still trying. Because that's what she did. Survived. Adapted. Refused to die even when dying made sense.
"Baby," she gasped. "Please. I just-- I only wanted--"
"You drowned me." Jake's voice came out wrong. Layered. Like several versions of him speaking at once. "Made me laugh. Made me kill. Made me--"
His blackened wrist flexed. The webbing shot out.
Harley tried to dodge. Her body wouldn't respond. The strand caught her shoulder. Stuck. Began smoking immediately, eating through her torn jacket, her skin beneath.
She screamed.
Jake pulled. Not hard. Didn't have the strength for hard. But enough to drag her a foot closer. Close enough to see her face. To see the betrayal there mixing with genuine confusion.
"I made you perfect," she sobbed. "My Good Night. My mallet. My--"
"I was never yours."
He raised his blackened hand. Formed a fist that looked more like sculpture than anatomy. Prepared to bring it down. To end this. To--
"Enough."
Bane's hand closed around Jake's blackened wrist.
Not squeezing. Not yet. Just holding. A reminder of differential. Of what strength actually meant when applied by someone designed for it instead of someone barely keeping their corpse animated.
"She is not your fight," Bane said quietly. His visible eye studied Jake's wrapped face with something approaching respect. "This rage. This refusal. This burning." His grip tightened fractionally. "This is what I came to break."
Jake's other hand -- the right one, still weak but functional -- shot out. Webbing fired point-blank at Bane's face.
The strand caught his mask. Stuck. Began smoking.
Bane released Jake's wrist. Stepped back. His hand found the webbing, tore it away with contemptuous ease. Where it had made contact, the leather was pitted. Damaged. But his skin beneath remained untouched.
"Better." Bane's smile was visible even through the mask. "But insufficient."
He moved.
Not rushing. Not charging. Just stepping forward with the patient inevitability of tectonic shift. His hand found Jake's blackened wrist again. Twisted.
Bone ground against bone. Not breaking -- the Kobra-Venom had reinforced the structure enough to resist that. But the pain was transcendent. Jake's vision whited out.
His other hand fired webs desperately. Bane caught them mid-flight. Used them like rope. Yanked.
Jake's weak right arm couldn't anchor him. His body flew forward. Bane's knee came up. Connected with Jake's sternum.
Something cracked. Not ribs -- those had been reset. Something deeper. Internal. Vital.
Jake hit the ground. Tasted blood that wasn't red. Some mixture of green and black that probably shouldn't exist in human biology.
He tried to rise. His right arm buckled. His left -- blackened, poisoned, dying -- wouldn't respond properly. The fingers moved but delayed, nerves struggling through concentrated toxin.
Bane crouched beside him. Not gloating. Just observing.
"You burn," he said quietly. "Even now. Even broken. The flames refuse to die." His hand found Jake's shoulder. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just measuring. "But burning alone is not strength. It is merely fuel waiting for direction."
He lifted Jake by the shoulder. One-handed. Like lifting a child.
Jake's legs dangled. Tried to find purchase. Failed.
"I will give you direction," Bane continued. His other hand formed a fist. "I will shape these flames into something purposeful. Something--"
Jake's blackened hand shot up. Fingers spread. Webbing erupted not at Bane but past him. At the tunnel ceiling.
The strand caught concrete. Stuck. Jake pulled.
Not pulling himself up. Pulling the ceiling down.
His enhanced strength was compromised. His body was failing. But the webbing -- concentrated, acidic, overproduced by glands in chemical overdrive -- was strong enough.
The concrete groaned. Rebar shifted. The tunnel had been compromised already -- decades of water damage, the general decay that was Gotham's foundation.
And now Jake's webbing eating through key support points.
Bane recognized the threat. Released Jake. Stepped back.
Too late.
The ceiling collapsed.
Not catastrophically. Not the whole tunnel. Just a section. Maybe ten feet of old concrete and rusted rebar and earth that hadn't been properly packed in fifty years.
It came down in chunks. In clouds of dust. In violence that transformed confined space into chaos.
Bane disappeared into the debris cloud. Not buried -- he was too aware, too skilled to be caught -- but obscured. Momentarily blocked.
Jake hit the ground as rubble rained around him. A chunk of concrete caught his shoulder. Another his leg. Smaller pieces everywhere.
But he was moving. Crawling. Away from Harley's broken form. Away from Bane's patient destruction. Toward--
Where?
The tunnel's only exit was blocked by Bane. The collapse had created maybe three seconds of opportunity. Not enough to escape. Not enough to--
Up.
The collapsed ceiling had created a gap. Not large. Not clean. Just a wound in Gotham's infrastructure where earth met tunnel, where the collapse had punched through to--
Something. Storm drain? Service tunnel? Surface?
Jake's blackened hand found rubble. Pulled. His body followed. Climbing through debris. Through dust. Through pain that transcended description.
His right arm dragged behind him. Useless. But his left -- poisoned, dying, black -- worked. Gripped. Hauled his weight inch by agonizing inch.
Behind him, through the dust: "Running demonstrates wisdom." Bane's voice. Calm. Almost approving. "But you merely delay the inevitable."
Jake kept climbing. Reached the gap. Found it too small. Maybe two feet across. His shoulders wouldn't fit.
His blackened hand pressed against the ceiling. Against old concrete. Against the barrier between him and any form of escape.
The toxins in his system concentrated. Responded to desperation. His veins glowed -- visible through carbonized skin, black shot through with luminous green.
The glands in his wrist went into overdrive. Production spiking. Chemical composition destabilizing. The webbing that formed wasn't webbing anymore. Just corrosive sludge. Pure acid given form by spider biology corrupted past recognition.
He fired it point-blank at the concrete. The strand hissed. Smoked. Began eating through.
Not fast enough.
Below, Bane's footsteps. Measured. Patient. Coming closer.
Jake's right hand -- weak, barely functional -- found purchase in the rubble. Anchored. His left hand kept firing. Kept producing that toxic sludge. Kept eating through concrete that was already compromised.
The ceiling cracked. Shifted.
Jake pulled himself into the gap. Shoulders scraped concrete. Ribs compressed. He was too large for this space. Too broken to make it work.
But the Kobra-Venom didn't care about 'too.' It only understood forward.
His body compressed. Bones grinding. Something in his chest gave way -- cartilage or organ, impossible to tell. He tasted blood that was mostly chemicals now.
He was through the gap. Barely. Into some kind of service space. Darkness above and below. The stench of rot and standing water.
Behind him, Bane's hand reached through the gap. Found his ankle. Gripped.
"You demonstrate potential," Bane said, voice echoing up through the wound Jake had created. "But potential unfocused is merely wasted energy."
He pulled.
Jake's body slid backward. Toward the gap. Toward the tunnel. Toward being dragged back down for the breaking he'd been promised.
His blackened hand found something overhead. A pipe. Corroded. Barely supporting its own weight.
He fired webbing at it. Then at the gap behind him. Created a connection. A bridge of that corrosive sludge.
Then released everything.
Not controlling the reaction. Not trying to direct it. Just letting the concentrated toxins in his arm vent all at once.
The result wasn't fire. Wasn't explosion. Just chemical combustion. Oxidation happening too fast, generating heat and pressure and force that had nowhere to go except--
Out.
The pipe shattered. The webbing ignited. The gap collapsed completely.
And Jake was thrown.
Not launched. Not lifted. Ejected.
His body flew through darkness. Spinning. Tumbling. No control. No awareness of up or down.
He hit something. Wall? Floor? Another pipe? His blackened arm took the impact. Bones that should have shattered held together through sheer chemical stubbornness.
The right arm wasn't so lucky. He heard it break. Felt the snap all the way up to his shoulder. The limb went from weak to dead weight in an instant.
He kept flying. Ricocheting. Hitting surfaces he couldn't see in darkness absolute.
Then: air.
Fresh air. Cold. Real.
He was outside.
Jake hit ground that was actual ground. Not concrete. Not metal. Earth and grass and the kind of surface that gave instead of breaking.
He rolled. Tumbled. Came to rest in a position that couldn't have been comfortable if he'd had the capacity to process comfort.
His blackened arm was ruined. The entire limb from fingertip to shoulder looked like something pulled from a crematorium. Still attached. Still technically functional. But destroyed.
His right arm was broken in at least three places. Bone visible through chemical scars.
His chest wasn't moving right. Something internal was bleeding. Probably multiple somethings.
But he was breathing. Heart beating. Alive.
Above him: stars. Gotham's perpetually overcast sky had cleared just enough to show a few. They seemed impossibly distant. Like things from a reality he'd never actually been part of.
Jake tried to laugh. Couldn't. The chemicals wouldn't let him anymore. The pheromones were finally dying. The Kobra-Venom was stabilizing. And whatever was left of him was too broken to produce sound.
So he just stared at the stars and tried to remember what it felt like to be human.
Below ground, in that tunnel chamber, Bane stood amid settling rubble.
Harley Quinn's broken form lay in the corner, still breathing, still surviving through sheer stubborn refusal.
And the gap where Jake had escaped was collapsed completely. Tons of earth and concrete sealed it.
Bane studied it for a long moment.
Then turned.
Walked back the way he'd come. Unhurried. Professional.
The Spider had escaped. Had demonstrated potential. Had burned with flames worth breaking.
But flames that ran were merely fuel waiting to be collected.
Patient men always collected what was owed.
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TL;DR
Gratitudes. Early Access in Patreon.com/MimicLord --> Mechanical-Arm Spider arc
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Thank you for reading The Laughing Spider.
This arc was about perseverance. The ability to keep standing in the face of adversity. If you felt the escalation, the pressure, and the turning point, then we're on the same wavelength.
I want to thank everyone who has subscribed, commented, and supported the story so far. Your engagement is what allows me to keep pushing the narrative harder, sharper, and more ambitious with every arc.
What comes next builds directly on what just happened. New dynamics. New threats. A very different Jake. The Spider Assassin arc is where the long game starts to show its teeth.
So tell me: What moments stood out to you in this arc?
Which character interactions hit the hardest?
What are you expecting from Jake now that things have shifted?
If you're enjoying the ride, stay subscribed, like the chapters, and drop a comment. It genuinely helps the story grow and lets me know what's landing with you.
We're just getting started.
~MimicLord
"I was never yours."
Up Next: Spider Assassin Arc.
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Summary: The Laughing Spider Arc
- Word Count -- 31, 253
- Chapters -- 16
- T. Finder Progress -- 5%
- Totems Collected -- 4
- Time Bank -- 02:07:00 / 127h / 5 days, 7 hours
- Days in Gotham -- 8