"The fastest way is to find this world's Bruce Wayne—if such a person even exists here."
"Knowing myself, he'd never believe that Peter Parker's body houses the soul of another Bruce Wayne. So, my best option is to knock him out and keep him locked up until I figure out a way to return to my own world."
Batman turned his gaze to the ramshackle computer Peter Parker had cobbled together, its casing a repurposed shoebox. It looked like a mess, but surprisingly, it ran smoothly. Batman quickly opened a browser and typed in a series of keywords.
His fingers danced across the keyboard, but with each search, his expression grew graver. Finally, he stood and walked to the window, staring out at the flow of traffic on the street below.
This world had no Gotham, no Metropolis, no Central City. Nor was there a billionaire playboy named Bruce Wayne. This wasn't a parallel universe—it was a completely alien world.
There was no Kryptonian who crash-landed on a Kansas farm, no demigod princess from Themyscira. But there was a guy in a red-and-blue suit calling himself Spider-Man.
"Everything starts from scratch. My return is delayed indefinitely. But that won't stop me—because I'm Batman."
"I need money, a base, equipment, gear, and complete control over this body."
Batman clenched his fist tightly, recalling the sudden chill he'd felt in Dr. Octavius's lab earlier that day, just before the alarms blared. He refused to let any ability remain outside his control. If he had to start from nothing in this world, he'd need a meticulous plan to keep everything in his grasp.
As he squeezed his fist, Batman noticed something else: this body was strong, far surpassing the limits of his own human strength. It wasn't on the level of his Hellbat armor, but he estimated it could lift around twenty tons.
This strength didn't fill him with pride for inheriting a "good" body. Instead, it made him uneasy. A precognitive sense of danger, superhuman strength, an inexplicable soul transfer into this body, and the unknown fate of Peter Parker's soul—every single detail was beyond his control.
Taking a deep breath, Batman began scouring Peter Parker's apartment for answers.
Online, Peter Parker was just an ordinary college student. Batman needed more, so he searched the cluttered apartment for clues about Peter's life.
Soon, he laid out his findings on Peter's messy desk: a red-and-blue suit covered in web patterns, two wrist-mounted devices, a notebook, and several canisters of chemical compounds.
The suit matched the Spider-Man costume he'd seen online. The wrist devices were clearly the tools Spider-Man used to shoot webbing. The notebook was a chaotic mess—its first few pages were filled with chemical formulas, used as scratch paper. After careful inspection, Batman recognized the formulas as the recipe for the webbing fluid in the wrist devices. The canisters held pre-mixed components, ready to be combined in specific ratios to create the final fluid.
The later pages contained Peter Parker's hand-drawn sketches of the Spider-Man suit's design.
All evidence pointed to one truth: Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
As night fell, Batman had no intention of sleeping. He quickly located an abandoned shipyard on a map, not far from the apartment. Donning a set of Peter Parker's black clothes, he left the apartment.
"I need to fully understand this body's speed, strength, reaction time, and senses. For now, I can only test strength and speed."
The abandoned shipyard loomed eerie and desolate in the darkness, creaking with every gust of wind. Foul water dripped from exposed pipes, and piles of industrial debris made the place so uninviting that even vagrants avoided it.
Batman's luck held. He found a rusted gantry crane and a dozen scattered counterweights nearby. After testing, he confirmed his strength in a normal state reached twenty-five tons. With his superhuman strength, his top running speed hit 190 km/h. No matter the obstacle or terrain complexity, his reaction speed handled it effortlessly.
With these physical capabilities, Batman's eyes drifted to the web-shooters he'd brought along. He recalled the videos of Peter Parker swinging through the air with flamboyant, acrobatic flair. The corner of his mouth twitched. After a moment's hesitation, he strapped the web-shooters onto his wrists.
Two minutes later, a visibly uncomfortable Batman removed them. He'd used grappling hooks before, but Peter Parker's ostentatious web-swinging was too much for him to stomach.
"With specialized techniques, I could push this body's strength and speed even further."
Silently, Batman cataloged every detail about this body's capabilities, already formulating a comprehensive training plan. He refused to let Peter Parker's raw power excuse him from training. In his mind, this strength didn't belong to him.
Muscle memory, reflexes, combat skills—everything needed to be honed from the ground up.
Over the next three days, Batman allowed himself only one or two hours of sleep. By day, he roamed New York's streets, learning everything he could about this world. By night, dressed in black, he trained relentlessly at the abandoned shipyard.
Using his access as an Empire State University student, Batman covertly analyzed his blood in the school's labs, testing his healing factor, sensory acuity, and every other aspect of this body. From the clues Peter left behind, Batman traced the source of these abilities: a genetically mutated spider.
Even the intangible "danger sense" was documented in Peter's notes, dubbed the "Spider-Sense."
"From a scientific perspective, this ability is the brain's hyper-fast, subconscious processing of subtle environmental changes, projected into consciousness as an 'alert.'"
"If so, I can train it specifically."
In the deepest part of the shipyard, Batman had cleared out a warehouse. On its wall hung a large map of New York City, studded with over fifty colored pushpins. Around the map were clippings from newspapers or handwritten profiles.
These marked the city's active, large-scale criminal organizations. Arms crossed, Batman stood before the map, as if claiming all of New York as his hunting ground.
"Building equipment to pinpoint my original world requires substantial funding and a base. I'll need to start from scratch and build a business empire like Wayne Enterprises to support it."
"Dr. Octavius's nuclear fusion energy project is a promising opportunity, but I'll need startup capital to get in."
"My first pot of gold will come from these gangs."