Batman's AI tech is worthless to ordinary people.
But Tony Stark is a smart man—and to someone like him, Batman's technology can be applied to weapons, aerospace, automobiles, medicine, industry…
virtually every field Stark Industries touches.
Faced with a kid who hasn't even graduated from Empire State University yet but holds tech like this, Tony Stark chose to pay for knowledge.
"Sir, congratulations on formally meeting an extraordinarily gifted young man."
After Batman left, JARVIS said to Tony Stark.
"Young? He only looks young. Talking to him felt like my father crawled out of the grave and possessed him," Tony groused without missing a beat.
"Perhaps not the most appropriate comparison, sir—but you do sound pleased," JARVIS replied.
The mood atop Stark Tower was light; Brooklyn's was not.
Captain Fick of the Special Operations unit worried one taser wouldn't be enough to drop Dr. Octavius, so he arranged four shooters to fire simultaneously from different angles.
They were crack shots, with gear built for counter-terror ops. The taser rounds hit Octavius, sending non-lethal but overwhelming current through him and wracking his body with convulsions.
Pop.
A flash burst at the chip on Octavius's back—Fick's goal of destroying the tentacle-control unit was achieved.
Everything went exactly to plan—until the result made no sense to Fick.
—One of Octavius's tentacles, no longer restrained, punched through Fick's chest at terrifying speed and force.
"We fried the control chip… so why—" was Fick's last thought.
"Fire!"
Someone shouted, and gunfire rattled through the sewer. Bullets tore toward Octavius and his gear. Sparks showered—some from rounds striking the arms, some from arcing equipment.
A heartbeat before the volley, Octavius ripped out a slab of brick wall with two tentacles and raised it as a shield. He glanced back at a machine now spitting sparks.
Boom!
The two free tentacles seized the ruined unit and hurled it.
Ratatat!
The shots kept coming. The device blew apart mid-air in a ball of flame, and the remaining bullets chewed at the wall shielding Octavius.
The brick slab didn't last. In seconds it crashed to rubble, dust boiling up to hide Octavius from view.
"Hold!"
With Fick down, someone else took command. Weapons raised, officers edged forward.
Through the murk Octavius looked prone, his arms still.
The experimental rig sat on a small dry platform over the sewer channel; to reach it, officers had to wade shin-deep through water.
As they drew close, all four tentacles snapped to life.
Two clamped the tunnel ceiling, yanking Octavius up and tight to it. The other two grabbed thick power cables.
Zzzzt!
Without a flicker of hesitation, Octavius plunged the cables into the water. A bass hum—and every officer locked up and dropped.
Expressionless, Octavius lowered himself back to the platform, took a pair of goggles from the surviving equipment, and slipped them on. Then, without a backward glance, the four arms worked in relay, carrying him away like a giant octopus.
"Fick, report." Topside, Chief George Stacy called into his radio.
Silence.
"Anyone copy? What's happening down there?" Cold prickled the back of his neck.
"Billy, get down there and—"
He hadn't finished when the pavement nearby erupted with a thunderous crack.
With help from the four mechanical arms, Octavius tore out of the sewer and onto the street.
"Medics! We need rescue below! Everyone else, stop him!" Stacy dropped the radio and shouted.
The police weren't the only ones to hear. Octavius did too. A tentacle grabbed a roadside car and flung it.
Thud—thud—thud!
A dozen vehicles of all sizes sailed in, and the street became a weave of black smoke and flame.
By the time the armed helicopter and rerouted cruisers arrived, Octavius was gone.
…
Abandoned shipyard.
Dinner was the same custom plan Batman had set for himself. The constant training of the past few days had even nudged his height up slightly. With the suit on, he was now over 1.80 meters (5'11"), and there was still room to grow.
But tonight he wasn't training. Wearing goggles, he was making sweeping upgrades to the Batsuit.
First up: the cowl. He disassembled and re-assembled the components he'd bought in the day, resizing and reshaping them to spec, then mounted them inside the helmet: night vision, thermal imaging, sonar, a gas mask, a micro radio receiver, and the padding changes needed to house them.
With that kit, his night fighting ability would jump.
He scrapped the standard combat boots. He refitted plates from the Spider-Slayer's armor onto new combat boots and added a bat beacon and pop-out skate blades to the soles.
The blades could serve both as a way to glide quickly over smooth surfaces and as weapons of opportunity.
The bracer knives were swapped for stronger, sharper alloys, and the gauntlets gained electrostatic adhesion and shock-delivery modules.
Peter Parker could scale smooth vertical surfaces on his own, but Batman had to plan for those powers to fail without warning.
He laid out gear for every situation: batarangs, gel bombs, a wire saw, painkillers, sedatives, adrenaline, noise makers, hemostatic spray…
The old surplus belt wouldn't carry it all, so he replaced it with a brand-new, latest-issue U.S. military tactical belt.
Short of a cape requiring special memory fabric, or custom vehicles with sky-high build costs, he'd armed every part he could.
He even fitted a micro-computer into the inside of a gauntlet for on-the-spot hacks of systems and software.
After triple-checking reliability, it was 10 p.m.
Without a break, he geared up and fired the Bat-Claw—the combined web-shooter/grapnel—swinging toward Oscorp.
As he moved, the cowl's micro radio picked up afternoon reports from Brooklyn.
"Dr. Octavius killed more than thirty officers in the sewers—then vanished!"