Chapter 293: Opponents Stupid Enough
Late at night inside Ponce Bank, a figure quietly picked the lock and slipped inside without triggering any alarms.
He stood beneath the skylight Batman had shattered—now repaired—for a long moment. Then his feet moved slowly, methodically testing each position where those Santa robbers had stood three days ago.
"From Batman breaking through the skylight to leaving with the robbers—the whole thing took less than ten seconds."
"According to the bank employees who witnessed everything, Batman used some kind of high-strength black thread. In today's world, the only material thin enough yet strong enough is from Parker Industries."
"Wonder if any strands got left behind?"
The figure searched carefully, seemingly intimate with both the bank's layout and Batman's actions that day.
Unfortunately, even the shattered skylight had been cleaned of all glass fragments. After searching extensively, he found nothing.
Just as he was about to abandon this location and move to the next site Batman had operated at, two figures—one tall, one short, one black, one white—appeared silently behind him.
"Hello." Batman's voice was low and gravelly.
"Jesus!"
The figure jumped forward, spun around, and yanked a pistol from inside his coat, aiming at where the voice had come from.
"Batman!" He gasped the name.
"You're looking for me." Batman's voice remained low and rough.
"Yeah, but I-I-I haven't committed any crime! I'm just a private detective! Someone hired me to investigate leads on you!" He rushed to explain.
"Who hired you?"
This time the question came from the short white figure beside Batman. The voice tried mimicking Batman's gravelly tone but couldn't quite hide its fundamentally youthful quality.
"The Captain from Queens Precinct." The private detective said.
He tried hard to see Batman's face, but the figure was pitch black from head to toe. Impossible to make out details. He looked toward the shorter white figure, but beneath Venom Robin's white shroud armor was an equally black face. Also impossible to distinguish.
"Stop what you're doing."
Batman turned and walked a few steps, then melted completely into the darkness and vanished.
The private detective stood there blinking hard. He gathered his courage, stepped forward a few paces, and—THUNK—walked straight into the bank's wall.
He instinctively grabbed his head, then quickly dropped his hands and spread his arms in confusion, feeling along the wall.
"How did Batman disappear?" The private detective was completely lost.
He'd taken the Queens Precinct job because he believed Batman was just an ordinary guy in black armor.
But now, having watched Batman walk toward a wall and vanish right in front of him—this ghostly performance threw him into complete self-doubt.
"What the hell is he?" The detective asked himself.
The question went unanswered. After checking the wall countless times—confirming it was solid, that there were no doors nearby for Batman to leave through—it was like the guy had vanished into thin air.
Just as the private detective sighed and prepared to leave, his nostrils suddenly flared.
"Wait. There's a smell in the air."
This discovery seemed to give him a lead. He hurried back to where Batman had been standing and sniffed frantically at the air.
"Rust, rot, moisture."
"He came from the sewers?"
The private detective frowned, then simply crouched down and pressed his face to the floor, sniffing:
"No. This rotting, damp smell is different from sewers. Seems like some kind of wood and soil mixture."
But that still didn't narrow things down. New York sat right beside the Atlantic Ocean. This kind of rotting, damp smell mixed with soil and wood was incredibly common.
Docks, riverbanks, sewers... everywhere had it.
"No, there's also rust. What place would have wood, abandoned metal, and soil all together?"
The detective scrambled to his feet and rushed back to his place, spreading an enormous New York map across the floor.
He searched inch by inch, finger moving slowly across the map until it stopped at one location in Manhattan's Lower East Side:
"An abandoned shipyard?"
---
"Robin, that was the most basic demonstration of 'accidentally exposing your trail and origins.'"
Atop a gargoyle statue outside the Metropolitan Museum, Batman spoke to Venom Robin:
"For anyone smart enough, it's full of holes. Like my timing—appearing just when he was about to give up, at his most vulnerable moment. Too convenient. Like the smell I left behind being too obvious..."
"But for that private detective, he'll only reach one conclusion: 'Batman operates from the abandoned shipyard.'"
Venom Robin scratched his head, but Batman immediately stopped the undignified gesture. He crouched beside Batman's feet and asked in confusion:
"I actually understood that part. But Old Bat, how'd you know someone would show up there tonight? The Batcave isn't even monitoring Ponce Bank."
"It involves planning every single one of your actions, Robin." Batman said. "Three days ago when I brought you on that operation, I already knew someone would appear tonight."
"Why not last night?"
"Police need to seal the scene. Bank needs to repair the skylight. The precinct will hire a private detective based on my first night of action. Add in the detective's travel time—it's completely predictable."
"Wait. You don't actually know that private detective's name too, do you?" Venom Robin started to scratch his head again, but Batman blocked him once more.
"Yes." Batman said. "No unconscious gestures like scratching your head, Robin. It reduces your intimidation factor."
---
The little girl Lunella sat in the car while Ben Grimm drove through Manhattan's streets.
Ben was a pilot. He wasn't skilled at detailed scientific experiments. For a genius like Reed Richards, keeping Ben in the lab just meant getting in the way.
During periods without flight assignments, Ben was the most idle of Baxter Building's core members. Right now he had enough free time to accompany little Lunella on her Manhattan wanderings.
Actually, it wasn't really wandering. Lunella held a palm-sized device with several antenna rods extending from it and a small radar display on the front.
This was something Lunella had built to find Batman. Ben found it pretty interesting, though he didn't believe such a small device could actually locate Batman.
Beep beep. Beep beep.
The device had been going off constantly since they'd left Baxter Building. The radar showed Batman under the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Lunella, your little gadget's showing Batman hasn't moved at all this whole time?" Ben glanced at the girl in the passenger seat.
Tap tap.
Lunella smacked the device twice and shook her head in confusion:
"Nope."
"So it's not actually a device for finding Batman, right? Since we've never even encountered Batman." Ben said. "Unless I yank the steering wheel right now and aim for pedestrians. Maybe then Batman would drop from the sky."
Lunella sighed in frustration:
"You're right, Uncle Ben."
"I don't actually know what this device is finding."
Brooklyn Bridge wasn't far from Manhattan—or rather, it literally sat between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ben drove the car around for a bit and arrived quickly.
Beep beep. Beep beep.
Lunella's device beeped nonstop. The radar showed them getting closer and closer to Batman.
Three minutes later, Ben and Lunella reached a spot beneath the Brooklyn Bridge along the shore.
"Don't tell me Batman's buried here." Ben looked at the device in Lunella's hands, then stomped the ground hard with his foot. Seeing Lunella nod, he groaned. "Seriously?"
Having chosen to accompany a kid on her outing, Ben maintained his "nothing better to do anyway" philosophy. He picked up a flat stone from the ground and started digging.
Beep beep. BEEP BEEP!
The device's beeping grew more frequent. Finally, when Ben unearthed something resembling a steering wheel, the beeping merged into one continuous tone.
Ben held the "steering wheel" in his hands and looked at Lunella seriously:
"Please tell me this thing's name is Batman."