"JARVIS, how long has it been?"
Tony Stark stood at the bar in his private penthouse at Stark Tower, mixing a drink while asking offhandedly.
Ever since Peter Parker gave him that half-finished yet technically mature, well-structured AI model—enough for Tony to finish turning "JARVIS" into a true artificial intelligence—life had been easy: Pepper handled the day-to-day, JARVIS handled the work. Tony had never been so comfortable.
"Three hours and fourteen minutes, sir," JARVIS replied. "Sir, your blood alcohol level has reached 0.08%. Please—"
Tony cut the concern short. "Drinking makes me happy, JARVIS."
The AI fell silent and quietly shifted the ambient lighting to a calming blue.
Tony refilled his glass, eyes expectant on the elevator.
Peter Parker had agreed to his request—to design a full security stack for S.H.I.E.L.D.—and had borrowed an office here to do it.
Tony could have done the S.H.I.E.L.D. job himself, but he chose to hand it to Peter. He wanted to see just how good the kid really was.
That "master vs. master" anticipation had him glancing at the elevator every few minutes.
At last, right after he drained another pour, the elevator display began ticking upward toward the penthouse.
"All done."
Batman tossed the one-time access token to Tony, who casually flicked it over his shoulder into the trash.
"Congratulations, Mr. Parker." Tony set down the glass and moved to his workbench. "Mind if I take a shot at breaching your shiny new security?"
He'd already keyed in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s URL, raring to go.
Batman gestured. "Be my guest."
He showed his usual confidence around Tony Stark—not only confidence in his own skill, but in the role of Peter Parker. Parker Industries—and later the Parker Group—would inevitably grow into a business empire; a little visible brilliance would make that arc believable. And based on Batman's research, Peter was a bona fide prodigy—the web-shooters and web fluid proved as much. The former had even inspired Batman's upgrade from a grapnel to the quicker, handier Bat-Claw.
Batman's poise only stoked Tony's competitive spark. He didn't hide a thing, attempting the breach right in front of him.
As minutes ticked by, Tony's face darkened. After ten-odd minutes, he threw up his hands.
"I surrender."
He shook his head, staring at Batman. "Peter, you're a genius. Your firewall is—how to put it—like a Hong Kong 'God of Gamblers' flick; you've mastered every trick at the table and pre-countered every idea and technique your opponent might try."
"I'm now fully convinced that AI model was yours."
Batman dipped his head. Tony wasn't wrong.
Coming from Gotham as a world-class hacker, Batman knew nearly every method to break into nearly every system. A firewall written by someone like that could stop everyone—except its author. With concepts ahead of this world's curve, even Tony Stark couldn't crack it quickly; and if he did, it would trip alarms even faster.
Batman hadn't needed to code a hidden backdoor for himself; the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. network was now his private garden, accessible anytime. The build hadn't even taken three hours—half of which he'd spent reading doubly and triply encrypted files inside S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd even quietly pinged their satellites—and located the missing Norman Osborn.
The green-suited Goblin of an executive was skulking in Queens under a cloak, looking ragged—almost pitiful. Batman wasn't fooled. The Sublevel B3 murders, the Smythe family's deaths—all Norman. Even the fifty dead on B2 lay partly on him, and partly on General Ross.
Watching Batman design a from-scratch system so tight even he would have trouble breaching it, Tony now spoke to Peter as a peer.
"Peter, this morning JARVIS flagged a market note—'Parker Industries' has developed a new material…"
As Peter Parker, Batman didn't keep the stone face; he smiled. "I just acquired a plant and renamed it Parker Industries."
"Good timing. Stark Industries is very interested," Tony said. "We could collaborate—and I can introduce a few raw-material suppliers."
Genius-level AI, unbreakable network security, and a high-demand new material—Tony could already see a young entrepreneur's rise. Where moments ago he'd treated Peter as an equal, now he was extending a friend's olive branch.
Batman declined. "Thanks, but I've already lined up suppliers."
He didn't want anyone's hand in his enterprise. The business empire existed to build a Mother Box—or something beyond it—to get back to Gotham, not to become this world's next billionaire king.
Even so, he hadn't forgotten to keep pressing crime—like the Goblin on the streets of Queens. Batman didn't plan to brawl with Norman in a crowded thoroughfare; he'd execute his Plan B for the Goblin instead—the one from the Osborn manor fight, interrupted by micro-missiles, pumpkin bombs, and gliders.
~~~
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