"The Batwing modification plan is complete, Bruce."
On Bat Island, the Prophet AI workstation temporarily mounted on the Arkham Batmobile chimed in with a reminder. Batman had finally finished converting the British-made vertical-takeoff-and-landing attack aircraft into a one-use Batwing.
During the downtime while modifying the Batwing, Batman had even managed to build a Batcycle, now stowed inside the Batwing's cabin.
Silver Shaw Rescue Company: "The situation on South Brother Island has been temporarily resolved. Assistant Alice is coordinating everything. Nothing major has happened with the Osborn Group lately…"
"After Obadiah's downfall, Tony Stark uprooted every last tendril of his influence inside Stark Industries and took down A.I.M. Security along with it."
Batman silently reviewed his plans.
"Remaining unresolved issues: Norman Osborn in New Mexico, the Cube prison in Wyoming that's become a Hydra base, the Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Garrett who's still hiding in plain sight, and Hydra inside the World Security Council."
None of these could be solved overnight. Batman would deal with them one step at a time, exactly as planned.
The good news was that Doctor Octavius's clean nuclear fusion energy project had succeeded. It was only a matter of time before Parker Industries transformed into the Parker Group.
Once enough capital had been accumulated, Batman would initiate the homecoming plan: cooperating with S.H.I.E.L.D. as a legitimate scientific enterprise, getting close enough to study the Tesseract up close.
And, using Parker Group funds, he would attempt to build multiversal-grade equipment in hopes of finding a way back to Gotham.
Before any of that could begin, though, there was one more urgent matter Batman needed to attend to.
Batman tapped his own shoulder. A small Venom head immediately wriggled out from the back of his cowl. "Dad?"
"Robin," Batman asked, "your symbiote form can change into anything, right? Does that include wings?"
"Uh… I'm not sure. I've never tried, Dad." Venom sounded confused.
Then realization dawned. It grew instantly excited, stretching its neck longer and shoving its face right in front of Batman's, nuzzling his stubbled chin like an affectionate puppy.
"Dad, maybe we can try?"
"No problem," Batman replied.
It was the early hours of the morning, two full days since T'Challa had come asking for vibranium.
Construction on Bat Island had never stopped during the Batwing refit. The underground Batcave was already taking shape, though aboveground the Wayne Manor… maybe it should be called Parker Manor now… was still only at the foundation stage.
Batman stood on one of those freshly poured foundations, far enough from the Batmobile and the newly completed Batwing, and said to Venom:
"Begin, Robin."
The moment the words left his mouth, the eager symbiote surged over Batman's body. As it had the previous few times, it preserved Batman's silhouette, but the suit's appearance and the eyes now carried unmistakable Venom traits.
This time the transformation didn't stop there.
Batman stood motionless. Behind him, the cape began to be swallowed by symbiote biomass, thick and churning like boiling tar.
Whoosh!
The cape vanished. In its place, two enormous wings—black and dark-red membrane stretched over bone and sinew—snapped open with terrifying force behind Batman's back.
Flap! Flap!
The fleshy wings beat hard, trying to lift Batman into the sky. Inside him, Robin-Venom strained with everything it had, but the best it could manage was to hover Batman less than ten meters off the ground.
The flight speed was laughably slow—barely half of what Batman had clocked when he first arrived in this world and tested Peter Parker's full sprint: 150 kilometers per hour.
Ten meters altitude, 150 kph—that was the current ceiling for Venom-Batman with wings.
With Batman's relentless training regimen, Peter Parker's body alone could now hit 280 kph using fifty tons of raw strength and spider-reflexes. Venom's winged form didn't even come close.
And after Batman's tests, it was clear Venom couldn't maintain the shape for long. After just a short flight, it was already exhausted, wilting like a frostbitten eggplant.
"Robin, don't push yourself."
Batman instantly sensed how wiped out Robin was inside him. He ended the test at once, dropping from ten meters back onto the Bat Island foundation.
The black symbiote matter retracted with a wet slurp. The wings folded back into a cape, and the Arkham suit returned to normal.
"Dad… I'm so tired… I need chocolate," Venom whined miserably, poking its head over Batman's shoulder.
Six or seven chocolate bars appeared in Batman's hand as if by magic.
"I prepared them in advance."
Venom lunged—"Nom!"—taking chocolate and Batman's entire hand into its massive maw. Yet under perfect control, its razor teeth didn't so much as nick Batman's skin. It just crunched all the chocolate at once, then licked Batman's hand with a long tongue.
"Chocolate! When did you get these?! Dad! You're the best dad in the whole world!"
Even though Venom had been bonded to Batman 24/7 these past few days, it swore it had no idea when he'd slipped the chocolate onto his person.
The question lasted half a second in its mind before it drowned blissfully in chocolate heaven.
"On top of the memory palace I already mastered, I've been running specific mental training to shield new memories. It seems to be working—Venom can't read my latest thoughts."
Watching the symbiote's eye corners droop contentedly like a happy puppy, Batman thought to himself.
From the moment he decided to take Venom in as Robin, Batman had secretly been training his memory palace. He refused to let every single thought be an open book to the symbiote forever.
The results were starting to show.
"Venom can indeed form wings, but both altitude and speed are far below expectations."
"For dealing with Tony Stark's Iron Man armor, I'll have to move to Plan B."
Plan A had been to rely on Venom. That was now a failure.
Plan B: Batman would do something with Tony Stark's arc reactor instead.
The night before last, while helping Tony tamper with the miniaturized arc reactor, he had completely reverse-engineered its principles.
In other words, if he wanted to, Batman could replicate an identical reactor from scratch right now.
But he had no intention of doing so. Figuring out the reactor had only ever been insurance—making sure Tony Stark never lost control of his suits in a way that endangered the world.
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