Chapter 398: A New Weapon
"Wakanda! Wakanda!"
The central plaza of the royal city was filled with people -- ten thousand Wakandans forming a wide hollow circle, their faces composed and still, watching the two figures at the center. As the sun cleared the rooftops, the crowd gave voice to what the silence had been holding all night.
The challenge between Black Panther T'Challa and Man-Ape M'Baku had begun.
The rules were ancient and simple. No Vibranium suits. No technology. Primitive weapons only -- spear and shield -- and the outcome would determine who held the throne.
Batman had chosen to respect Wakanda's tradition. He was watching from a rooftop five kilometers away, speaking quietly with Venom Robin.
"Report. Everything from the temple, start to finish."
His eyes were on the distant figures trading spear-strikes in the plaza below. Robin gave a complete account -- the guardian panther, the Enchantress, Skurge, what he remembered of being under the Enchantress's influence.
He got to the part that had been sitting unresolved and raised it.
"Old Bat. You said on the comm that the Enchantress's target was the Black Panther Totem. But from where I was standing, after T'Challa went inside the temple -- I went directly up against the witch and her man. I didn't see either of them do anything to the Black Panther Totem."
"Did we get that wrong?"
Batman was still processing Robin's account, running each described moment as a visual sequence and analyzing frame by frame.
He didn't answer immediately. He redirected.
"You said the Enchantress had control of you the moment you looked at her. How did you break free?"
Robin blinked.
Honest answer: he had no idea. He remembered looking at her green eyes, and then a dim blurred state he couldn't describe clearly, and then he was on the ground in T'Challa's arms rolling across stone.
"No idea. Probably T'Challa woke me up."
Batman pulled his eyes from the plaza and looked at Robin.
"The Enchantress took control of you. Skurge killed the guardian panther outside the temple. Apart from those two things -- nothing else occurred?"
Robin shook his head. Completely honest.
"Nothing. Did you find something?"
Batman put a hand briefly on Robin's shoulder.
"Neither did I. Watch them."
He turned his attention back to the plaza.
"Bare hands is boring," Robin muttered, watching T'Challa and M'Baku exchange spear attacks in the circle of Wakandans. "At least they have spears."
He reconsidered. Still boring compared to axes.
Speaking of which.
The thought that had been waiting at the back of his mind since the underground chamber suddenly surfaced and refused to go back down. Something he had completely overlooked when he was giving Batman the account of the fight. Something sitting on the chamber floor that Skurge had not taken with him when the Enchantress pulled him out.
Robin's eyes went wide.
"Old Bat. I need to go back to the temple."
Batman looked at him. "For what?"
"When I described the underground space I missed something. Skurge got pulled out by the witch, but he left his axe behind."
The faintest movement in Batman's expression. "You want the axe."
"Yes!" Robin was already moving his weight forward. "Can we go? Right now?"
"I'll come with you. I want to look for anything you may have missed."
"What are we waiting for!"
Robin was off the rooftop before Batman finished the sentence, already swinging down on extended tendrils. Batman followed.
He understood Robin's reasoning, and Robin's reasoning was sound. During the fight, Robin had been forced to improvise -- constructing a symbiote-based copy of Skurge's weapon to meet the man's attacks on equal terms. That improvised weapon had an inherent weakness: it was part of Robin's body, subject to all the vulnerabilities of symbiote material. Fire, sonic vibration, the impact resonance of sustained combat exchanges. Any of these could have destabilized the symbiote construction mid-fight.
The real axe had survived a prolonged engagement with a symbiote copy of itself and shown no damage. That was a meaningful data point about the weapon's construction.
They dropped back into the underground channel system and moved quickly toward the temple.
"It's still here. He didn't take it."
Robin spotted it immediately and crossed the chamber in a few long strides, reaching down and hoisting the double-bladed greataxe off the floor.
Batman moved through the space more slowly, scanning surfaces. The chamber had absorbed the full record of the fight -- cracked stone, the indentations left by impact, the areas where the ground had been deformed by force. He read the room carefully.
Nothing. No residue, no marking, no trace Amora had left intentionally or otherwise. The environment had been thoroughly overwritten by combat damage.
He was about to accept the negative result when Robin appeared in front of him and held the axe out like someone presenting a gift they're very proud of.
Batman looked at the weapon properly for the first time.
The axe was well-made in ways that were obvious at a glance -- the balance was deliberate, the blade geometry precise. What took another moment to register was the decoration. Fine lines ran along the handle, extremely shallow, cut so lightly that they were essentially invisible unless the light hit them at the correct angle.
The lines wound along the shaft in irregular curves and gathered at the junction between blade and handle, resolving into a pattern of symbols.
Batman looked at them for several seconds.
"Old Bat, are you going to give it back or not?" Robin's impatience had a particular texture to it -- the texture of someone who has acquired something and is now watching someone else hold it.
Batman pointed at the symbols on the handle.
"When we're back, research this script. Find whatever records exist about it."
Robin nodded rapidly, not caring in the slightest about any script.
Batman returned the axe.
Robin took it. He turned it over once, confirmed it was real and in his hands, and immediately attempted to put it on his back.
The problem was immediately apparent. Robin's current height was approximately four feet. The axe was designed for a being several times larger. The handle was too long to carry straight -- he had to angle it diagonally across his back, the head extending past his shoulder and the base extending past his hip.
He looked completely unhinged. He didn't care at all.
"Ready," Robin announced.
Batman nodded and they moved toward the exit. Behind him, Robin was taking inventory of the new weapon.
"Old Bat. How exactly did you beat the Noise? You never told me."
"The Villain mech. The one stored in the Batwing's hold."
Robin processed this. He glanced back in the direction they had come from.
"You didn't bring it back with you. I didn't see it when you arrived."
"It can't be returned. The scale is unworkable for transport now." Batman kept moving. "I left it in Wakanda."
Robin stopped walking.
"What?"
Batman continued without turning.
"We came here, we fought for this, and we're leaving behind a mech that I've never even been inside?" Robin's voice went up incrementally. "You donated a mech to Wakanda? A whole entire mech? I didn't even get to sit in it once and now it lives here?"
Batman had already reached the tunnel entrance.
Robin stared at the axe on his back for a moment, as though calibrating whether the trade was adequate.
He followed.