A young entrepreneur who harbored kindness and remained untainted by corporate greed.
Having witnessed the cruelty and devastation brought by Hydra and war, he had chosen to fight against Hydra in his own way.
The justification Batman had forged for his Peter Parker identity was airtight enough that even Wanda could pick no faults with it.
In truth, had Batman never become Batman, this was precisely the path he would have chosen to walk.
"I believe you." The crimson magic swirling around Wanda's fingertips vanished, and she flashed Batman a slightly sheepish smile. "The two of us only have each other to lean on; we have to be exceptionally cautious no matter what happens. Please understand."
"Thank you for your trust," Batman smiled, seemingly unsurprised by the abilities Wanda and Pietro had just displayed.
On one hand, Batman's persona was that he had already taken note of the sibling pair beforehand, knowing their respective abilities and harboring the intent to cooperate.
On the other hand, with superheroes and an increasing influx of super-powered individuals emerging, superpowers had shifted from fictional concepts restricted to television, movies, and novels into a genuine reality.
While they might still remain out of reach for ordinary people, super-powered individuals almost instinctively gravitated toward wealth and power.
If Batman had acted like an ignorant country bumpkin at this moment, it would have been far easier to arouse Wanda's suspicions.
"It's getting late. You two will stay here tonight," Batman said with a smile to the mutant siblings. "As for the specifics of our cooperation, we can discuss them in detail after you've settled in."
Wanda and Pietro nodded.
It wasn't until Batman departed that the sibling pair exchanged a glance, suppressing the excitement welling up in their eyes as they ran toward the detached villa.
Nearly everything here was brand new. Seven or eight refrigerators were crammed with food, and the menus and phone numbers for ordering takeout rested on the tables.
Entertainment facilities such as a private home theater and a swimming pool were fully equipped.
Compared to the living conditions they had endured in Sokovia, this place was practically paradise.
Touching this and looking at that, the blink of an eye brought them to nightfall.
Inside the private theater located on the basement level of the villa, Wanda and Pietro were curled up in large, plush sofas, each wrapped in a blanket as they watched the imagery on the screen.
Yet neither of their attentions was focused on the movie playing on the screen.
Once the novelty faded, reality surfaced alongside it.
"Wanda, Mr. Parker isn't deceiving us, is he?" Pietro asked.
With only the two siblings present, Pietro shed a bit of his shyness, replaced by a maturity that surpassed that of ordinary teenagers.
Crimson hues churned within Wanda's pupils as she looked at her younger brother Pietro:
"No, I can be certain of that."
"Are we really going to become his thugs? Who knows if he's actually going to deal with Hydra? What if he casually points to a competitor of his and insists they're Hydra—should we make a move or not?" Pietro asked.
"If something like that truly happens, I'll twist his head right off the first chance I get." A flash of crimson magic crossed Wanda's eyes before disappearing.
Pietro shook his head, reaching out to throw off the blanket draped over him, and his entire figure vanished in a flash of silver light.
The blanket drifted downward softly; before it could even land in a heap, Pietro's body flashed once more, diving right back beneath the blanket.
Neither Wanda nor Pietro spoke a word. A few seconds later, the air—lagging behind Pietro by a countless margin—came sweeping through in a rush, howling and whistling as it buffeted the private theater.
Once things quieted down, Pietro looked toward his sister Wanda:
"Wanda, I've checked. The entire villa, along with a massive perimeter around it, has zero surveillance."
Wanda nodded, her gaze returning to the screen:
"It seems Mr. Parker is cooperating with us in good faith."
"That villa, along with the surrounding garden, has roughly three hundred cameras deployed across it," Batman said to Alfred. "Perhaps the young man named Pietro can detect a portion of them, but the remainder will still elude him."
One of Alfred's eyes flickered with infrared surveillance imagery.
The cameras couldn't capture Pietro's figure, but infrared surveillance clearly captured the heat signatures signifying Pietro's thermal distribution spreading outward to every single corner of the villa, both inside and out, in that split second.
"Mm... Unfortunately, Pietro didn't manage to find even a single one," Alfred said. "Aside from the surveillance, the residential area is not equipped with any measures to prevent them from leaving."
"I did it on purpose," Batman said. "Trust me, they have no reason whatsoever to leave that villa."
"After all, in their eyes, you're the one who rescued them from the fires of Sokovia and provided them with food and lodging... But human hearts are impossible for me to fully fathom," Alfred said. "In my opinion, sending Mr. Connors over to keep them company is the safest bet."
The Mr. Connors in Alfred's words was naturally Professor Lizard.
"Alfred, there's no need for that," Batman said. "If they genuinely harbored any other intentions, they could have acted the moment their plane touched down; they wouldn't have waited until now."
"If it were the Batman of the past, he certainly wouldn't think this way," Alfred remarked. "You've been deeply influenced by Aunt May."
"I know," Batman said.
Hearing Alfred mention Aunt May, Batman couldn't help the corners of his mouth curving upward slightly.
In his treatment of the sibling pair Wanda and Pietro, wasn't Batman himself adopting another variation of Aunt May's role?
Without Aunt May, Batman's operations in this world would have grown far more extreme and violent, rather than the way they were now.
He might even have directly cloned a body and completely frozen Peter Parker's physical form away.
Yet Batman had never done so to this day, willingly enduring a massive expenditure of willpower instead to suppress the anxiety that hovered near the brink of losing control ever since he acquired superpowers.
Seeing the corners of Batman's mouth turn up, Alfred smiled along with him.
If not for the fact that his current format made it rather inconvenient to show his face before May Parker, Alfred would genuinely have liked to personally pay a visit to the elderly woman capable of illuminating this Dark Knight.
"I need to meet with Tony. Alfred, help me look after the three kids." Batman said to Alfred.
The three children he referred to were naturally Robin, Benjamin Reilly, and Gwen.
"The Shadow is pre-booted." Alfred nodded.
A few minutes later, amidst the pitch-black night sky, the "Shadow" Batwing surged upward, plunging into the cloud cover like a massive bat-demon.
The wing membranes, forged from Vibranium, a small amount of Adamantium, and memory fibers, gave a gentle flap, and the Batwing vanished into the horizon as a dark shadow.
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