"Thirty-two pumpkin bombs, eleven daggers, seven serrated throwing discs, hundreds of bullets in various calibers, four miniature missiles, and one completely destroyed glider."
Dawn was still a while away, so even if he headed out now, he wouldn't be able to buy a factory for producing capes.
Batman laid out all the items he'd taken from Norman Osborn's secret room, along with the various firearms he'd buried earlier and then dug up.
He stared at the items for a few minutes, then picked up the Green Goblin's destroyed glider. Using his tools, he disassembled it completely into parts, discarding the outer casing, the spike ejection devices, and everything else, keeping only the power unit.
"Not just the cape, but the Batmobile too."
Batman looked at the various items that now nearly filled the temporary operations center. His mind was already crystal clear on the next steps.
Purchase a car and modify it into a Batmobile to handle highly mobile opponents and the demands of cross-city operations.
Acquire a suitable factory to produce Bat capes, while also creating secondary samples to send to companies in need, securing orders in the process.
Buy the abandoned City Hall subway station and transform it into the Batcave to support all of Batman's operations.
"The information I pulled from S.H.I.E.L.D. after hacking in through the Manhattan Police Department shows that after Captain America fought the Hydra leader known as the Red Skull, the Tesseract was recovered. But neither Captain America's nor the Red Skull's remains were ever found."
"It's possible they triggered some kind of mechanism and were vaporized by the Tesseract without a trace... or they were teleported somewhere else."
"Just like the Mother Box's Boom Tube."
After setting his short-term goals, Batman took off his Batsuit and headed to the counterweights and industrial equipment at the abandoned shipyard to start his routine workout. All the while, his mind kept turning over the details:
"The document I saw in the director's office at the Manhattan Police Department made it clear that Dr. Otto was exempt from criminal penalties but would have to choose between two options."
"I need to find Dr. Otto and see if he chose to join S.H.I.E.L.D."
"If he doesn't join, I can use the cape project to provide Dr. Otto with funding and a testing ground, and refine his formulas."
"That would let my commercial empire plan come together even faster."
A faint light gradually appeared in the sky.
Batman stopped his workout and returned to the apartment Peter Parker had rented.
In the mirror, young Peter Parker's face looked unchanged despite days and nights of nonstop work, but his temples had turned noticeably white, and a short, dense beard covered his entire chin.
"By this Saturday, I need to tell Aunt May that this apartment is being vacated. Otherwise, I'll have to make time to come here and show my face."
"The identity of Peter Parker can show a portion of his intelligence appropriately; otherwise, it would be impossible to explain how a college student could buy a factory and produce cape material that surpasses current world technology."
This time, no other issues got in the way of Batman's plan. He drove straight to a car dealership in Manhattan.
Compared to new cars, used ones—which were harder to trace in terms of funding sources and transaction records—were Batman's preferred choice.
Under the combined influence of money and clear objectives, Batman quickly drove away from the used car market in a second-generation Dodge Charger.
The car had a massive engine bay, allowing Batman to remove the original engine and replace it with a more powerful one, as well as install a series of weapons and intake devices.
The retro exterior would let the added full-body armor, run-flat tires, and front spoiler blend seamlessly with the vehicle, preventing parts from scattering everywhere after a collision.
The prototype car was now in hand, but Batman wasn't in a rush to head back and modify it. Instead, he drove to the industrial area in Brooklyn.
Batman needed to overhaul nearly everything in the vehicle from the inside out, except for the chassis itself, and the spoils from the abandoned shipyard wouldn't be enough on their own.
He needed to buy a large number of accessories, electronic components, and matching tools.
Before purchasing those, though, Batman had to acquire the target factory first—to avoid having nowhere to store the items.
In Brooklyn's industrial area, there were many factories built during World War II.
Among them was one that had once provided technology to the U.S. Air Force before shifting to aerospace development. But it had gradually fallen behind the times and was on the verge of bankruptcy due to funding shortages.
Since it was established during World War II, this factory held permits for heavy industrial manufacturing and special chemical handling, which perfectly matched Batman's requirements.
This would serve as one of his bases, alongside the Batcave, and it would be a legitimate business on the surface. Batman needed to ensure everything inside the factory appeared reasonable and legal, to avoid attracting trouble from official organizations like environmental protection agencies.
Once again, a money offensive sealed the deal. This factory, covering about ten thousand square feet, was acquired by Batman for less than five million U.S. dollars and renamed "Parker Industries."
Next came personnel changes, structural adjustments, and process overhauls within Parker Industries—issues that couldn't be solved with money alone. They would take time.
Even materials inferior to the Bat cape couldn't be produced as samples in a single day; it would require purchasing raw materials and Batman personally tweaking the existing processes he had in mind.
After spending half a day handling the necessary legal procedures and formalities, Batman drove off again in the old muscle car.
He was heading out to order a series of network equipment to set up a complete surveillance network inside Parker Industries.
All the industrial equipment from the abandoned shipyard was unusable. To modify the newly purchased muscle car into a Batmobile, Batman would have to do it inside Parker Industries.
With a surveillance network in place, he could proceed with the task confidently.
On top of that, Batman also needed to purchase various car parts required for the Batmobile modifications separately. With the technology available at the newly acquired Parker Industries, even if Batman could design them himself, he couldn't produce them—so he had to buy what was already on the market.
When everything was ready, and the various materials he'd purchased first on the New York market began arriving at Parker Industries thanks to the power of money, the surveillance network covering the entire factory was already operational.
After dismissing everyone from the factory, Batman first went to the abandoned shipyard to retrieve all the weapons and the glider.
He spent the remaining time in front of the computer, his fingers flying across the keys, as a more complete and optimized artificial intelligence—superior to the half-finished AI model he'd given to Tony Stark—gradually took shape.
Night fell, and in the deserted Parker Industries, deep within one of the buildings, underground.
This had originally been a huge underground warehouse, but it was now completely cleared out. Besides the necessary air vents and drains, there was only one exit, with all the others fully sealed by Batman.
The place was now lit up as bright as day, with firearms, bullets, miniature missiles, pumpkin bombs, a glider, a muscle car, and the Batsuit making it look like a terrorist's private arsenal.
"Oracle."
Looking at this temporary Batcave, set up for the Batmobile modifications, Batman suddenly spoke to the empty warehouse, where he was the only one present.
"Bruce Wayne, what are your orders?"
Between Alfred and Barbara, Batman had chosen to create his artificial intelligence based on Barbara Gordon.
Before building a commercial empire and acquiring more advanced equipment and technology, the Oracle AI, named Barbara, was sufficient to meet Batman's needs.
The future Alfred AI would require more powerful large servers, a cooling system, and an independent generator to fully unleash the old butler's capabilities.
Oracle's voice, with its natural rises and falls, showed no trace of electronic synthesis—it was exactly as Batman remembered.
Batman's eyes flickered, but his voice remained steady:
"Initiate the 'Batmobile' project. Begin modifications now."