Dr. Otto had passed the test Batman had hidden within his words, proving that his core desire was indeed psychological security, not a craving for the power and control that the tentacles provided.
Though Batman had only agreed to craft a suit for Dr. Otto with defense as its primary function, when he left South Brother Island and returned to the Batcave in Manhattan, Batman wasted no time. He immediately initiated a new project: building brand-new mechanical tentacles for Dr. Otto.
These new tentacles abandoned any spikes or claws that could be used as offensive weapons, serving instead as a defensive measure for Dr. Otto in case either the Hulk or Professor Connors lost control while Batman was absent.
The new tentacles would be silver-gray, with lines more akin to the streamlined design of Batman's own armor, rather than the sharp, angular edges of the old ones.
Their core power source and control systems would be held by Batman, with Otto granted usage rights but not absolute ownership, and Batman retaining the ability to remotely lock them down or shut them off.
"Robin."
Batman had donned his Arkham suit once more, his voice low as he called out.
Venom had been lurking quietly inside Batman's body until it heard him summon it. Only then did the black symbiote matter writhe, poking its head out from behind Batman's shoulder.
"Dad?"
"You did well last night."
Batman's voice was icy, but two bars of chocolate magically appeared in his hand.
The previous night, during the battle against the Vulture Toomes trio and the escapees from Ryker's Island, Venom had fully adhered to the rules Batman had set for it. It hadn't disobeyed once or done anything it shouldn't have.
Batman had every reason to reward his Venom Robin.
At the sight of the chocolate, Venom's eyes lit up instantly.
"Dad! I love you!"
It was clearly drooling with craving, yet it didn't forget to thank Batman first. Only after saying that did Venom lash out its long tongue, rolling the chocolate into its mouth and chewing noisily.
Batman's expression remained unchanged. He pointed toward the ecological containment unit, and Venom obediently slithered inside, waiting for Batman to turn on the computer and play children's programming for it.
Batman didn't disappoint Venom's expectations. He selected a carefully chosen educational show and then moved to the other side of the Batcave.
The Vulture flight suit, Shocker gauntlets, and Scorpion battlesuit—confiscated as Batman's "trophies" from the night before—were placed one by one on the wall housing the white symbiote derived from anti-Venom.
He then turned back to Venom, picked up the finger-sized piece of vibranium from atop the containment unit, and headed to the workbench, intending to study it.
Beep.
At that moment, the Oracle AI suddenly emitted a sharp alert.
Without a second's hesitation, Batman set the vibranium aside again.
The Oracle AI's alarm only triggered in a handful of scenarios: anomalies on South Brother Island, keyword hits from monitoring programs at Stark Industries or Oscorp, the Batcave being located or tracked...
...or the program Batman had preemptively embedded in data stolen by that Hydra agent from within S.H.I.E.L.D.—related to Norman Osborn's whereabouts—being activated!
Inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. base in the Adirondack Mountains, Batman had detected a data stream transmitting outward from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal systems. He'd instinctively planted a tracking virus in it at the time.
Since then, the device receiving and sending the data—containing S.H.I.E.L.D. internals and Batman's tracking virus—had remained dormant. Until today.
"Weaponized energy, spatial teleportation, infinite energy development, consciousness digitization and artificial intelligence, cosmic-scale energy laws, lightspeed engines..."
A string of encrypted files was transmitted back to the Batcave by the virus program Batman had planted on impulse.
After decoding them, what appeared before his eyes was a massive array of highly advanced technological terms and information.
"This is data on the Tesseract?"
Batman let the Oracle AI manipulate vast sheets of data flashing before him like a rain of code. Relying on Peter Parker's body's reaction speed and dynamic vision, he absorbed every detail without missing a thing, then analyzed it with his own Batman mindset.
Analysis might not even be necessary. This data had flowed out from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Adirondack Mountains base, where they were executing "Project Pegasus," and had been painstakingly stolen by a Hydra agent.
Batman judged it almost instantly, confirming that this was indeed Tesseract data.
"Barbara, collect, catalog, and analyze all the data."
Batman's voice was low as he spoke, his hands already moving to pinpoint the address of the information reception and transmission device harboring the tracking virus.
"Understood, Bruce." The Oracle AI responded immediately, and the Batcave's still somewhat rudimentary servers kicked into full-power operation.
Several dozen minutes later, Batman had located the data's position, his brow furrowing in tandem.
The device had been activated in Wyoming, and from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s satellite imagery, the area was nothing but desert—yellow sand and barren earth, with nothing else in sight.
The trail seemed to go cold. Batman's only way to investigate that region in Wyoming was to go there himself.
But after just a few seconds of thought, Batman issued another command:
"Barbara, pull up all the data on that quinjet piloted by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Black Widow and Hawkeye that I hacked from S.H.I.E.L.D. earlier."
Since crossing over, Batman had never dealt with any forces in Wyoming.
Aside from passively learning about the state from news or other sources, the only time "Wyoming" had come up in his clue-gathering was with that S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet.
Batman had hacked S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems at the time and obtained the jet's model, takeoff time, landing time, and return time.
This data hadn't been purged after the Oscorp incident wrapped up; instead, Batman had stored it in his Batcomputer, where it now proved useful again.
Though the specific destination of the quinjet wasn't listed in the files, that didn't stump Batman.
With a simple mathematical calculation of the jet's flight speed, direction, and time, Batman reached his conclusion immediately:
"That quinjet's departure point was Wyoming, and if the location matches where the Hydra information reception device was triggered, the speed and time from Dharavi in Mumbai, India, to there align perfectly with the data I collected after hacking in."
"And Dr. Banner also took a helicopter from Wyoming to reach New York, proving that the area isn't the uninhabited wasteland shown in satellite imagery—it's hiding another S.H.I.E.L.D. base."
"Or rather... a Hydra base."
"Dr. Banner might know something about the situation there."