Chapter 331: The Inevitable Alliance
"Go!"
The Lizard Professor's tail swept in a full arc and launched a tree — twenty centimeters in diameter, thirteen meters tall — spinning upward into the sky above Bat Island.
At his command, the red Tyrannosaurus Rex erupted from its resting position and crossed the open ground in three enormous strides, its footfalls sending deep reverberations through the earth. It caught the falling tree in its jaws, shook its head once, and then padded back to set the trunk carefully in front of the Lizard Professor, tail swinging with visible satisfaction.
"Good," the Lizard Professor said, nodding several times. He coiled his tail around the tree and sent it spinning upward again.
Batman arrived at the island's core carrying a compact briefcase. This was what he found: a reptile the size of a city bus playing fetch with a seven-ton dinosaur that had been nearly dead forty-eight hours earlier.
The red T-Rex's injuries were resolving faster than any reasonable projection would have suggested. The horn was gone and wouldn't be growing back, but the burns and surface damage from the fire ring rescue had already healed significantly. Whatever the Lizard Professor's pheromone system was directing the animal's biology to prioritize, it was working. Yesterday it had been barely able to lift its head. Today it was running.
"Batman." The Lizard Professor caught the returning tree one-handed and turned to face him, showing a full set of fangs in what served for a greeting.
"You seem to have made considerable progress with it," Batman said.
"It has completely accepted me as its father," the Lizard Professor said with satisfaction. "When are you planning to transfer it?"
"The day after tomorrow."
The Lizard Professor nodded. He watched the red T-Rex settle onto its haunches with the resigned patience of an animal whose toy had been confiscated.
"Handing it to the girl Lunella effectively means handing it to Reed Richards as well. Are you concerned about what Richards might do with access to a creature like this?"
"The full-wave projector is a larger concern than the T-Rex," Batman said.
"Where is it now?"
"I have it."
The Lizard Professor's expression registered this without particular surprise. He moved toward the red T-Rex and set one clawed hand gently on top of its enormous head, scratching slowly along the ridge where the horn had been. The animal leaned into it.
Batman looked down at the ground beneath his feet. This was the core of Bat Island — the site where the Parker estate foundation was being laid, and below it, the larger Batcave that would eventually replace the City Hall station. The Lizard Professor's return scratch had driven the tree trunk directly into the unfinished foundation concrete.
The Lizard Professor followed his gaze, noticed the hole, and extracted the trunk without comment. A few quick motions reduced it to a loose pile of timber sections.
The red T-Rex whined softly, looking between the destroyed toy and its father.
"I want to visit my children," the Lizard Professor said quietly, still looking at the animal. "When the time is right. I've been away a long time."
"I'll come with you," Batman said.
"You'll terrify my wife. She startles easily."
"I'll use a different identity."
The Lizard Professor was quiet for a moment, and then registered what Batman meant. Peter Parker. The young man whose face was under the cowl — who had visited North Brother Island exactly once in the past month and a half, every other appearance being the armored figure in front of him now.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the voice and the posture and the relentless forward pressure were being produced by someone barely past twenty.
"The children will be glad to see you, Peter," the Lizard Professor said. The fangs appeared again in what was, after enough exposure, readable as warmth. "My wife too."
"There's something I want to discuss with you privately," Batman said. "I'm forming an alliance."
The Lizard Professor tilted his head, still scratching the T-Rex's neck. "Like in the films. A group of like-minded individuals, unified around a common objective."
Batman neither confirmed nor denied the framing.
"I'm in," the Lizard Professor said immediately. He hadn't asked for a name. Hadn't asked for a mission statement or a membership list.
"You don't need to think about it?"
"I trust you," the Lizard Professor said simply. "Not just Peter Parker. The version of you standing in front of me right now. I've trusted both for a while." The fangs showed again. "The smile looks worse on this face, I realize."
"I expected you to hesitate," Batman said.
"There's nothing to hesitate about, Peter." The Lizard Professor moved his hand from the T-Rex's head and looked at Batman directly. "I knew you would propose this eventually. From the moment you brought Professor Morbius to North Brother Island, the direction was obvious."
"Why?"
"Because your capacity has limits. The number of individuals in your network has been growing, and a single person cannot indefinitely manage that level of complexity while also managing everything else you're managing." The Lizard Professor paused. "You need us to have structure. To hold each other accountable when you can't be present. The alliance wasn't a possibility — it was always going to happen."
He glanced at the briefcase in Batman's hand.
"What's in that?"
Batman didn't answer. He held the briefcase out.
The Lizard Professor took it, considered the latch for approximately one second, and then drove one claw through the side of the case. The briefcase fell away in two pieces, and its contents were revealed: a pair of trousers and a white lab coat, neatly folded.
The Lizard Professor laughed — a sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest and had nothing gentle about it. His skeleton began its crackling, grinding process of rearrangement, scale by scale, joint by joint, until the figure standing in the wreckage of the briefcase was a human man in his fifties, lean and somewhat rumpled, with the general appearance of someone who had been working long hours in a research environment and had not recently had access to a mirror.
Dr. Curtis Connors pulled the trousers on and shrugged the lab coat over his shoulders and stretched his arms above his head with visible relief.
Batman was not looking at him. His attention had shifted immediately to the red T-Rex, monitoring for any response to the transformation. If the pheromone bond held only in the Lizard Professor's reptilian form, this was the moment to find out.
The T-Rex looked at Dr. Connors. It looked at the space where the Lizard Professor had been. It looked back at Connors.
It made a low sound, settled its weight, and put its chin on the ground.
"See?" Connors said, noticing Batman's posture. "It understands. It's intelligent, Peter — not human intelligent, but considerably more than most people will give it credit for. Think of it as a very sophisticated working dog. Smart enough to adapt, not smart enough to cause the specific kind of trouble you're worried about."
"If it's intelligent enough to understand the transformation," Batman said, "I need to consider whether it's also intelligent enough to eventually communicate information about us to Lunella or Richards."
Connors paused, adjusting the lab coat's collar.
"I said a sophisticated working dog, not a border collie writing a memoir. You're safe."
"About the alliance," Batman said, shifting the conversation. "I want your thoughts."
"Many." Connors looked out over the water surrounding Bat Island. "Where would you like to start?"
---
At the same hour, in Stark Tower, Colonel James Rhodes sat across from Tony Stark and said what he had flown to New York to say.
"Tony. On behalf of the United States Air Force, I'm formally requesting to purchase one Iron Man prototype unit."
Tony poured him a drink and slid it across.
"You already know the answer, Rhodey."
Rhodes accepted the glass, drank, and set it aside.
"I do," he said. "The moment those generals got their hands on it, the first thing they would do is pull it apart and rebuild it as a weapons platform."
"So we understand each other."
"We do." Rhodes leaned forward slightly. "But here's what I need you to think about. If I leave here empty-handed, I'm not the last one who's going to ask. There will be other officers, other officials, other approaches. And some of them will bring public pressure — congressional hearings, regulatory arguments, national security frameworks. They will try to make the case that a private individual operating weaponized armor is an unacceptable situation, and they will attempt to compel you to hand it over."
Tony Stark's eyes had the particular brightness they got when he was genuinely engaged with a problem.
"Let them come," he said.