"Thirty-two pumpkin bombs, eleven short knives, seven serrated discs, over a hundred rounds of various calibers, four micro-missiles, and one completely wrecked glider."
There was still some time before dawn; even if he went out now, he couldn't buy a factory to start making the cape.
Batman laid out everything he'd bagged from Norman Osborn's secret room on the floor, then pulled out the stash of guns he'd once buried and later dug up.
He stared at the lot for a few minutes, then picked up the Green Goblin's damaged glider and stripped it to parts with his tools—tossing the shell, the spike-ejector, and so on, keeping only the power unit.
"It's not just the cape. It's the Batmobile."
Looking at the gear that nearly carpeted his makeshift command center, Batman's next steps were crystal clear.
Buy a car and refit it into the Batmobile—so he could counter hyper-mobile opponents and operate across cities.
Buy a suitable factory to produce the Bat-cape, and at the same time make second-tier samples to ship to industries that need them, in order to land orders.
Buy the abandoned City Hall subway station and convert it into the Batcave to support all of Batman's ops.
"In the S.H.I.E.L.D. files I cracked at the precinct, it says that after Captain America fought HYDRA's leader, the 'Red Skull,' the Tesseract was found—but neither Cap nor the Red Skull's remains were ever recovered.
"It's possible they triggered something and the Tesseract vaporized them to nothing… or transmitted them somewhere else.
"Like a Mother Box 'boom tube.'"
With his short-term goals set, Batman shed the suit and moved to the weights and machines in the abandoned shipyard for his routine training, his mind still spinning:
"In the Manhattan chief's office I saw the document: Octavius is exempt from criminal penalties, but faces two choices.
"I need to find Octavius and see whether he'll join S.H.I.E.L.D.
"If he doesn't, I can use the cape program to fund him and provide lab space—and refine his equations.
"That would accelerate the timeline for my business empire."
The sky began to lighten.
Batman stopped training and returned to Peter Parker's apartment.
In the mirror, Peter's face hadn't changed despite days of nonstop hustle, but a short, dense beard covered his chin, lending a touch of maturity to the young face.
"By Saturday I need to tell Aunt May I'm giving up this lease. Otherwise I'll have to keep swinging by just to show my face."
"Peter Parker can display a little brilliance—otherwise how do you explain a college kid buying a factory and producing cape materials beyond today's tech?"
With nothing blocking today's agenda, Batman went straight to a Manhattan auto mart.
Compared with new cars, a used car—harder to trace money and paperwork—was his first choice.
With cash and a clear target, he drove a second-generation Dodge Charger off the lot in short order.
The engine bay was massive; he could pull the stock engine, swap in something more powerful, and add a suite of weapons and intake systems.
The retro shell would let full-body armor, run-flats, and a front splitter blend with the design, instead of having add-ons scattering everywhere after a collision.
With a base car bought, he didn't rush back to mod it. He headed to Brooklyn's industrial district.
He planned to overhaul the whole vehicle inside and out—almost everything but the frame. The trophies in the shipyard wouldn't come close.
He needed a ton of parts, electronics, and proper tools.
Before buying those, he had to acquire the target factory so the shipments had somewhere to go.
Brooklyn's industrial zone still held many plants founded during WWII.
One was a facility that once supplied tech to the Army Air Forces, later pivoting to aerospace—now falling behind the times, short of cash, and near bankruptcy.
Founded in wartime, it held heavy-industry manufacturing and special chemical handling licenses—exactly what Batman needed.
It would be one of his bases besides the Batcave—his legitimate face. He had to make everything look aboveboard so the EPA and friends wouldn't come knocking.
Money talked: he picked up the roughly 10,000-square-foot plant for under $5 million and renamed it "Parker Industries."
Next came the shifts money couldn't snap its fingers for—personnel moves, org chart changes, process overhauls. That would take time.
Even a step-down material from the Bat-cape couldn't be spun up in a day; he needed to source feedstock and personally tweak the processes in his head.
After half a day of legal paperwork, he drove the old muscle car out again.
He had to order a full set of networking gear to stand up a plant-wide surveillance net.
The shipyard's machinery was shot; to convert the muscle car into the Batmobile, he'd have to do it at Parker Industries.
With a surveillance net, he could work in peace.
He also needed to buy off-the-shelf automotive parts for the mod—Parker Industries didn't yet have the tech to fabricate everything he could design.
Once the orders were placed and local materials began arriving under the grease of money, the factory-wide network went live.
He cleared the building, swung by the shipyard to fetch the weapons and gliders, and got to work.
The rest of his time was ten fingers flying over a keyboard—an AI more complete and optimized than the half-finished model he'd given Tony Stark began to take shape.
Night fell. In the deepest underground hall of an empty Parker Industries:
It had been a vast storage bay—now cleaned to the concrete. Apart from necessary vents and drains there was only one exit; Batman had sealed the rest.
It was bright as day. Guns, ammo, micro-missiles, pumpkin bombs, gliders, the muscle car, the Batsuit—like a terrorist's private armory.
"Oracle."
Gazing at the ad-hoc Batcave built to refit the Batmobile, Batman spoke into the empty air.
"Bruce Wayne, what are your orders?"
Between Alfred and Barbara, Batman chose Barbara Gordon as the template for his AI.
Until the business empire and heavier tech were in place, an "Oracle AI" modeled on Barbara was enough for his needs.
A future Alfred AI would require bigger servers, cooling, and independent power to live up to the old butler.
Oracle's voice carried natural cadence, no digital burr—exactly as he remembered.
Batman's eyes glinted; his tone stayed flat.
"Initiate the 'Batmobile' program. Begin the refit—now."
~~~
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