Chapter 379: A Signal for Help
"Alice. Status report."
In the top-floor office of Parker Tower, Batman sat in a grey suit with his hair precisely combed, working through the stack of Parker Industries projects that required his direct decision while Alice gave her briefing.
Alice stood beside the desk in a black pinstriped suit and pencil skirt, no documents in hand, delivering every item from memory with clean precision.
Batman processed it all without slowing down -- handling each matter as it came, fielding the questions Alice had accumulated, and then leaned back slightly.
"Alice. I'm giving you two weeks to acquire the following companies."
He slid a list across the desk. Alice looked it over. Nearly every name on it was connected to semiconductors, chips, or specialty manufacturing.
"We're expanding again?" She already knew what her employer was building toward.
"Yes. I've been developing an upgrade to existing Bluetooth technology. The market for it is going to be significant." Batman said. "Earphones alone will generate substantial revenue."
The Bluetooth expansion was a front. What Batman actually needed was to move Parker Industries into chip fabrication -- groundwork for the Alfred AI. Current commercial chips couldn't come close to meeting what the AI would require. He would have to manufacture his own. That wasn't the obstacle; the engineering wasn't beyond him.
Alice turned the thought over in her mind. Bluetooth was technology people were already writing off as obsolete. She didn't see the angle. But she didn't push back either. She trusted her employer's judgment.
"Also -- I need a private airstrip, a farm, two helicopters, and a private transport aircraft." Batman added the rest of the list.
Once he confirmed Alice had everything noted, he left.
Back at the City Hall Batcave beneath Manhattan, he shed the suit and pulled on the Arkham suit. He glanced across the open floor and found Venom Robin standing alone in the middle of the space, working through a striking sequence against empty air -- every movement sharp and heavy, but with the symbiote's capabilities entirely absent from it.
Batman walked over and stopped him.
"Robin. What I've been teaching you are fundamentals. That doesn't mean you abandon what you already are."
Venom Robin's strikes had been clean but stripped of everything that made him dangerous. The symbiote's instincts weren't in any of it.
"I know. But using the symbiote is pure instinct for me. I've tried to fold your tactical training into that instinct--" Venom Robin lowered his hands. "It feels wrong. Like I'm fighting myself."
"I had a colleague in the Justice League whose approach might give you something to work from." Batman said.
Venom Robin ran through Batman's memories for a moment, then ventured:
"Martian Manhunter?"
"John Jones. Yes." Batman said. "Like you, his body could reshape itself into whatever form the moment required. If anything, his range exceeded yours."
Venom Robin nodded. That comparison was accurate and he knew it. The Martian Manhunter could shift into other living creatures, inanimate objects, architectural shapes -- anything. In Batman's world, the man had been called the Swiss Army knife of the Justice League. Venom Robin's capabilities didn't reach that breadth.
"From what I've seen in your memories, old bat -- his fighting style was almost entirely flight, shapeshifting, and raw strength. I didn't see any traditional combat technique in it."
"That doesn't mean he lacked it. He was highly proficient in most fighting disciplines. He simply had no need to show it." Batman said. "Starting tomorrow I'll have someone spar with you in person. Someone weak enough that you can work at full instinct without holding back."
"Iron Man?" Venom Robin asked.
Batman was quiet for two seconds.
"The Black Knight. Dane Whitman."
---
Late October.
It had been two weeks since Dane Whitman took the Ebony Blade and accepted the title of Black Knight.
For Batman, it was one of the rare stretches since his arrival in this world where nothing catastrophic was happening.
Everything was moving on schedule. Silver Sable's team had reached Antarctica and was working the coordinates Batman had provided, searching for traces of the Vibranium deposit.
The Black Knight showed no signs of the curse manifesting. If anything, training with the Ebony Blade in hand had accelerated his development -- he could already go dozens of rounds with Venom Robin fighting at suppressed strength.
Tony Stark had apprehended a criminal who called himself Boomerang and delivered him to a newly completed detention facility.
The prison was worth noting. It had been built jointly by Norman Osborn -- leveraging his political foothold -- and Tony Stark's resources, in the aftermath of the dinosaur invasion. Its purpose was specifically to house super-powered criminals that conventional facilities couldn't contain. The site was on an island in Jamaica Bay off Queens. Government troops provided the outer perimeter; inside, a fully sealed isolation architecture and intelligent monitoring network allowed for customized containment tailored to each prisoner's specific abilities.
Tony Stark, in what could only be described as a moment of particular personality, had named the island facility "The Raft."
Dr. Connors and Dr. Otto's joint prosthetics research had reached completion. Parker Industries was now producing units in volume. They weren't for sale -- Alice had organized a dedicated assessment team, and prosthetics were provided as gifts only to those with verified need. Recipients were enrolled in a one-year psychological evaluation program to ensure no one used the technology as a pathway to something criminal.
The project ran at a loss. But the upgraded Bluetooth technology had landed with unexpected force in the market -- Bluetooth earphone sales had more than covered the gap, and the overflow had funded the better part of the chip research investment as well.
This relatively quiet period continued until October twenty-second.
On Bat Island, Batman was deep in optimization work on the Alfred AI, the sound of keystrokes the only thing filling the space.
Then an incoming transmission broke the quiet. Not from a bat-communicator -- those he knew by sound. This was something different. Something that had been silent since the day he received it.
The Kimoyo Bead.
T'Challa, Prince of Wakanda, had given it to him as one of three gifts in gratitude for returning the stolen Vibranium. It was a contact device -- to be used when Batman needed Wakanda's help.
Batman had studied it thoroughly. No tracking capability. No locator function.
He had not expected T'Challa to be the one initiating contact.
He stared at the bead for two or three seconds, then picked it up.
A voice came through immediately -- urgent, raw at the edges:
"Batman. I need your help. I ask it in the name of the Panther God. I have nowhere left to turn. You may be the only one who can help me."
It was T'Challa's voice. Batman recognized it immediately -- the man had left an impression, one of the very few people he had encountered in this world whose bearing, speech, and conduct had been entirely without fault.
But the voice he was hearing now carried exhaustion that ran deeper than sleep deprivation. It was the exhaustion of something that had broken a person all the way through.
***
20+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces