Chapter 1971

"Hi everyone, I'm Spider-Man. I think that goes without saying, since we're all Spider-Men. I assume you've all seen the 'Cat Getan Travelogue' written by that other Spider-Man? I really liked that blog post, so when I actually met a Batman, I chose to go back to his hometown, Cat Getan, with him."

"Today is my second day here, though we arrived last night. I have to give a lot of thanks to a Great Angel named Lucifer; he felt I performed quite well in the game, so he was willing to give me a lift on his way."

"Oh, right, one extra thing—we had a layover in Heaven. I even waited in the Garden of Eden for over two hours. Honestly, the fish there are really lively. I wanted so badly to record the angels fishing to show you all, but unfortunately, filming isn't allowed there."

"Alright, alright, I got up extra early today. I heard that in Cat Getan City, even in the middle of the night, there are supervillains active. Let's see if we can run into any familiar faces from the Cat Getan Travelogue."

"Hey, wait, what's that? Hey, you guy in the green suit, stop scribbling on the wall! Stop right now! Otherwise, Spider-Man is going to make you regret it!"

With a flurry of 'pitter-patter-bam', Batman covered his eyes with his fingertips. He felt a bit of ringing in his ears, so he used the device on his gauntlet to check his ear pressure again.

But he understood that it wasn't his ears that were the problem; those persistent buzzing sounds were appearing inside his brain.

Now, Batman felt he should have cut his losses, followed his gut the first time he felt regret, and not caused more trouble. As it turned out, his gut was right.

The biggest difference between this Spider-Man from Schiller's universe and the others, besides the fact that he had been delving into academics since graduation, was that he had truly been bottled up for too long.

There isn't a single Peter Parker in this world who is quiet. If you feel like things are peaceful and quiet, it's definitely because someone else is suffering from an ear infection on your behalf.

In many cases, Peter appeared quiet because he was very aware that making a racket in a laboratory or research center wasn't great, and chattering in the ears of other researchers would easily affect experimental results, so he held it in as much as possible.

But that didn't mean he didn't want to talk. No matter how long he held it in, he couldn't just chatter at test tubes; he'd be dragged off by Nick to see Schiller for a psychological evaluation.

So Peter developed a little hobby: surfing the web on the Spider-App and various social media platforms, hosting livestreams, and chatting with other Spider-Men or netizens.

Because he spent his days buried in experiments at the research institute without saying a word, he only truly became himself at night. Therefore, during such times when he could let loose, Peter was even more talkative than other Spider-Men, to the point where even the consistently tolerant and gentle Gwen couldn't quite handle him.

And now, it was Batman's turn.

He never imagined that despite all his careful calculations, he had forgotten to account for his own medical and mental health expenses.

The two of them had returned to Cat Getan together just after six o'clock last night. From the second Peter's feet touched the ground, he didn't stop talking for a single moment until four in the morning.

Batman's time in the Batcave was mostly spent checking equipment for wear and tear, reviewing Cat Getan's situation during his absence, and updating or maintaining critical gear.

No matter where he went, Spider-Man's voice followed like a shadow.

Batman had never imagined there would come a day when he couldn't focus on listening for information that might reveal intelligence. But after midnight, it felt like a high-speed rail had been built between his left and right ears; every word Spider-Man said grazed his cerebral cortex at high speed, slipped out the other side, and vanished into the wind.

After accidentally scratching a piece of equipment for the third time, Batman decided to throw Spider-Man out.

And before making that decision, Batman had actually seriously considered whether such an action could be called humanitarian for Cat Getan's criminals—knowing that he hadn't even pondered that question when breaking their limbs.

On the screen, Spider-Man had already caught the Riddler; clearly, he was demanding that the Riddler scrub off the graffiti on the wall.

After watching for a while, Batman decided to go back to researching cross-world communication technology.

The photos Spider-Man took of the Riddler were forwarded thousands of times on the Spider-App forum, with hundreds of comments below from all sorts of Spider-Men exclaiming, "Too cool!"

A hand tapped the heart icon below the photo. Stark held his phone a little further away, took off his glasses, and looked at Steve, who was organizing equipment in the tool room next door.

Stark leaned back hard, glanced at Steve's status, and then, as if nothing had happened, returned to a normal standing posture. Just as he turned to leave, Steve spoke.

"You'd better not try to run, Tony. You know Nick won't let us off the hook. The meeting is at 2:30 PM, remember?"

Stark let out a long sigh, leaned against the bar with one hand, and tapped the countertop with his fingers. "Schiller just helped him rake in a huge fortune, so what kind of business could be so important that he has to gather everyone together to talk about it?"

Stark rolled his eyes and continued, "Everyone knows I don't like meetings, but if every meeting organizer could get straight to the point in the first second and finish the important stuff with the fastest speed and most concise language, I would fall in love with meetings."

"You know that's impossible, Tony." Steve finished fastening the Velcro on his gloves. With a click, the back door of the tool room opened, and a steel arm reached in.

Steve took a chainsaw from the tool board next to him and handed it to Bucky, who was covered in frost. He then looked back at Stark, who was about to leave, and said, "Nick specifically pointed out that we both have to go together. He wants me to watch you put on your armor to prevent you from sending just an iron can like last time while you run off to who knows where."

"Is there any difference? My armor records all meeting content and even distills it into something more essential, which saves everyone a great deal of time."

"But that won't work, Tony. The biggest technical difficulty is that you simply can't convince Nick."

"But Schiller always manages to; he hasn't attended many team meetings."

"Because he's a psychologist; his job is to convince others." Steve put down what he was holding, walked out of the tool room, and stood opposite Stark. "I suspect Nick isn't entirely doing this to discuss what happened in the Battleworld. I saw a group of people who didn't look like agents entering S. H. I. E. L. D. earlier; Nick should be in negotiations with them."

"And you made a guarantee that I would definitely go without my consent."

Steve looked a bit helpless. He held out his hands and said, "Alright, it's my fault. But Jarvis is in desperate need of your help lately, and you need S. H. I. E. L. D. to deal with the leader of the mutants; otherwise, his proposal won't go smoothly."

Stark's attention was immediately diverted. Mentioning Jarvis and Wanda's business gave Stark another headache, but this clearly convinced him. He nodded and said, "Fine, but there's still an hour until the meeting. I'm going to have a drink over there. Are you coming?"

"No. Bucky is helping Falcon with ground positioning training; I have to go to the backyard to help. Remember not to drink too much. If Nick finds out you didn't bring your brain..."

"Got it, got it."

Stark waved his hand impatiently and turned to walk toward his seat alone. When Steve walked back into the tool room, he found Bucky leaning against the back door, watching him.

Seeing Steve return, Bucky smiled and said, "Getting more and more proficient, huh?"

"If this keeps up, I could get a psychology license." Steve sighed, hung the heavy chainsaw back on the tool board, and the two of them walked out through the back door together.

Rapid footsteps echoed in the hallway. The dim lights turned on one by one. Nick pushed open the doors to the conference room, and the light suddenly brightened.

The first thing he saw was Stark leaning against the wall. He nodded at Steve with satisfaction, but as he walked closer and smelled the alcohol, he frowned with slight dissatisfaction.

"Don't look at me like that. Your long-winded nonsense before getting to the point is enough to make me want to drown my sorrows in drink." Stark was listless and distracted, but he didn't forget to snap back.

And after Nick walked in, Schiller actually showed up too, which surprised Stark a bit. Could what Nick was about to say really be something major?

The Avengers knew that this psychologist didn't like meetings either. In fact, Nick's level of small talk was enough to make Hydra tremble and the KGB talk about it with fear; there wasn't a single person in all of S. H. I. E. L. D. who liked meetings.

However, unlike them, Schiller always found all sorts of suitable excuses to skip meetings, which undoubtedly made it a skill that many agents ranked high on their wish lists for their next lives.

Stark, who had mostly sobered up, turned his head and saw that everyone had actually arrived. All the Avengers were there, and even the trainees—those young heroes—were sitting in their chairs, looking slightly excited.

Poor things, they didn't know what they were about to face, Stark thought. Nick was best at extinguishing all passion for saving the world and all illusions about the cause of justice.

"Alright," Nick tapped the table. "Everyone's here. Let me say a few words."

Stark fell asleep instantly.

By the time he woke up again, it was 4:00 PM. The conference room wasn't exactly empty, but the atmosphere was at its peak—Nick's atmosphere.

At 4:10 PM, Nick finally finished summarizing the work of the past period, then spent another twenty minutes looking toward the future, and finally started talking about the real business.

By this time, Schiller had just woken up.

Steve, who had been awake for a long time but had been talked to sleep again, gave Schiller a thumbs-up. Being able to precisely parachute into the progress bar was a skill worthy of envy.

"Wake up! Everyone wake up!!" Nick began to roar again, clearly having more people who failed their parachute landing and crashed on the spot, mostly young heroes who were already sleep-deprived.

"Ahem." Nick cleared his throat. "It's foreseeable that our work focus for the next period will be the Battleworld. But before that, we have to handle the matters in the real world properly. The most important of which is—copyright."

"The world's largest entertainment company, Disney, has approached me. They are willing to pay hundreds of billions of dollars annually to buy the image rights of all superheroes under S. H. I. E. L. D. for film production and merchandise sales. What do you all think?"